


Everything that comes after

by Mymlen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Draco in Muggle-land, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, On Hiatus, Pining, Post-War, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Smoking, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2020-12-07 14:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20977355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mymlen/pseuds/Mymlen
Summary: It’s been a year and a half since the war. Harry, Ron and Hermione are living together at Grimmauld place. Hermione has her internship at the Ministry. Ron is with the aurors, and Harry isn’t anymore. He isn’t the chosen one either, and some days he feels like they should still be at Hogwarts. He has dreams, occasionally, about being behind on homework or late to class. It feels like he has stumbled into some adult life he never really expected to have.





	1. Prologue

It started with the phone call.

Harry was alone in the darkened living room at Grimmauld Place. Ron and Hermione had both gone to bed a while ago. Harry had considered doing the same. He had had a glass of firewhisky and then another one and he should probably have gone to his room and at least tried to go to sleep, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to, so he had stayed where he was, in the soft armchair in the living room, listening to the nighttime noises of the old house.

And then the phone rang.

It was ten to midnight, so really not that late, but too late for the phone to ring. No one but Mr Weasley ever called them, they had really only gotten the thing installed in the first place to indulge him. But now the sharp noise was cutting through the quiet like a siren and Harry’s chest tightened. He got up from his chair but didn’t reach to pick it up. It kept ringing. His heart was beating too fast.

He was already hearing the words in Mr Weasley’s broken voice: _Harry, it’s Ginny_.

_It’s Teddy._

_It’s Molly_

_It’s George, Bill, Percy, Fleur._

The phone was on the floor, halfway behind one of the couches - a result of a long and tedious process of figuring out a way to squeeze muggle technology into a house as soaked with magic as Grimmauld Place. Harry took a deep breath before reaching down to pick up the receiver.

“Mr Weasley,” he said, voice held tight. “It’s Harry. What’s wrong?”

He was met with silence from the other end. There was an unnatural buzz in his fingertips. He tried to breathe normally, to keep down the building panic in his body.

“Hello?” he said. “Are you there? Did something happen?”

“This... Hello. This isn’t Mr Weasley,” said someone carefully in a voice that was decidedly un-Weasley-like.

“Who are you? How did you get this number?” Harry snapped, too sharply, but his nerves didn't know what to do with the information, whether that made the situation better or worse, whether he would still need to run upstairs to wake up Ron and Hermione the second he hung up.

“Draco,” the voice said and Harry's thoughts jammed. “Malfoy,” the voice added. “From school.”

Harry stared at the dark shapes in the living room around him, at the shadows between them. His body was still braced for news of someone’s death, and it was only somewhere beyond that tense anxiety he registered the name and put a face to the posh voice. _From school_ he said, like Harry might have forgotten him. _From school_ he said, as though he thought Harry would still remember him in the context of a classroom.

“Malfoy,” he said finally, flatly.

“Yes. I’m- I'm terribly sorry for calling you so late. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

Harry sat down on the edge of the couch.

“I was awake.”

“Right,” said Malfoy’s voice. It sounded weird, not like Harry remembered it at all. “Of course, you were expecting a call from Mr Weasley,” he continued. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t take up any more of your time, then. I'll try again some other time-“

“Now is fine, Malfoy.”

Harry sunk into the couch and let his head fall back against the backrest.

“I’m not waiting for a call. What do you want?”

“I…” Malfoy cleared his throat. “Well, I was wondering if… perhaps you might meet with me. Maybe over a drink.”

Harry closed his eyes and pushed his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“What?”

“I said I was wondering if-“

“I heard you, I – why? Why would you want that?”

He could hear him breathing. There was something strangely intimate about it. When he spoke again, his voice sounded even more strained.

“Yes, I suppose it was a strange thing to ask without context, but I… I would like to talk to you.”

“We’re talking now.”

“I would prefer if we could talk face to face. I know you have no reason to want to meet with me, but I would be very grateful if you would… consider it, at least.”

Harry stared ahead of him as his tired brain tried to make sense of what Malfoy, Draco fucking Malfoy, was asking him.

“You mean… you want me to come meet you now?"

“No, of course not now,” Malfoy snapped, a sliver of irritation slipping into his voice and for the first time he sounded familiar. “Just when you have the time," he pushed on. "Whenever you can fit it into your busy schedule.”

Harry hesitated. He tried to think it through, past the total absurdity of the idea, of this conversation, but he was too tired, his mind too sluggish. And then he decided not to think about it, because fuck it.

“Alright,” he said instead.

He waited. A second passed and then Malfoy’s voice was there again, repeating uncertainly:

“Alright?”

“Sure, I’m not doing much this week anyway." Or any other week, for that matter. He definitely didn't have a "busy schedule". So whatever, if Malfoy wanted to see him, he could do that. "Thursday?” he said.

There was another long moment of no words from Malfoy. The line crackled. He could still hear him breathing.

“As in tomorrow?” Malfoy asked.

Harry closed his eyes.

“Tomorrow’s thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Huh... Yeah, then tomorrow.”

“Okay. Good. Perfect, then.”

“Did you have a place in mind?” Harry asked. “The Leaky Cauldron?”

“Perhaps some place more… discrete?”

Harry scoffed.

"Sure, that's not suspicious at all."  
"Seriously, Potter?" Malfoy said and Harry could almost see the indignant sneer on his face. "I'm trying to be _accommodating _here. I just thought you might prefer not to be seen with me."

"I don't really care. But you're right, the Leaky would probably be awful."

“There’s a muggle pub near where I live. I can give you the address? I think it’s unlikely anyone will recognize you in there.”

Harry frowned.

“In Wiltshire?”

“I live in London now.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Fine. Where is it?”

He got up to find a pen and extracted a piece of parchment from a pile of Hermione’s drafts of articles and petitions. He jotted down the address.

“There’s a tube station right near it,” Malfoy added.

And for the first time the idea surfaced in Harry's groggy brain that this might actually be a prank. He had no idea what the point of it would be, but this was supposed to be Draco Malfoy's voice, and it definitely _sounded _like him. But it had also called him near midnight, on an actual telephone and had just uttered the most muggle sentence Harry had heard from anyone in over a year, and really, it was all such an unlikely combination of things, it had to be a joke.

Malfoy kept talking, though. Asking if they could meet at eight. Harry said eight was fine. And Malfoy thanked him and hung up. Harry put the phone back. He leaned back in the sofa and stared ahead of him at the dark and empty living room of Grimmauld Place, where ancient wizards were asleep in their paintings, an empty owl-cage stood open by the window, a couple of Ron’s crates from the jokeshop hummed ominously in the corner and the carvings on the furniture blinked at Harry with curious, wooden eyes.

“That was fucking weird,” he muttered.


	2. Chapter 1

It had been a year and a half since the end of the war and nearly a year since Harry, Ron and Hermione had moved into Grimmauld Place together. It still surprised Harry whenever someone mentioned it, that it had been a whole year now. It really didn’t feel like that long. He still felt like they ought to be at Hogwarts. He still had dreams, occasionally, about being behind on homework or late to class. It felt like he had stumbled into some adult life he never really expected to have.

It had started out good, when they'd first moved in. Ron had been helping out George and Lee with the jokeshop as much as possible, until he and Harry had joined the aurors. Hermione had been contacted by the Ministry about an internship the second she’d passed her Hogwarts exams. The three of them had moved in at Grimmauld Place and the routine of living like that had come easily. Everything had been surprisingly smooth for a while, surprisingly normal. Hermione had left for the Ministry ridiculously early in the morning and Harry and Ron had made their way to auror training at more reasonable hours. They’d taken turns shopping and cooking, joking about how it felt like they were pretending to be adults. They still did that, even though it didn’t feel much like pretending anymore. Harry still had nightmares, he still didn't sleep enough, but for a while he'd been pretty sure it was the same for Ron and Hermione. He'd figured they all just needed time.

But then they'd had time, and Ron and Hermione had started to breathe easier, and Harry had just slept less and less. He'd been constantly tired. He hadn't talked much to the other people in the auror training program, and he had never gone with them when they went out for drinks. Ron had done his best to bring him along, to drag him into conversations, and he'd been nice about it, but Harry had known he was holding him back, getting in the way of Ron making new friends. Harry hadn't wanted to make new friends. He hadn't liked any of them much. He'd dragged himself through four months of training and hated every minute of it, but it had taken Hermione sitting him down and telling him he had to quit before he'd even realized that it wasn’t supposed to be like that. He'd just assumed everyone else hated it too – half the time all they'd talked about was how hard it was and how unfair the teachers were. He supposed he'd expected it to be more like the DA or the Order of the Phoenix. Something that made sense, seemed meaningful, where he could keep doing what he was good at. It turned out fighting Voldemort didn’t actually prepare you for working in law enforcement. Most people there hadn't been like Tonks or Moody. It turned out Harry wasn’t very good at following orders. It turned out he still hated the Ministry – it was changing after the war, sure, but it wasn’t changing very quickly. His instructors, the older officers, hadn't wanted him to think for himself, but he sure as hell hadn't been going to let them think for him.

Hermione had started out in Magical Law Enforcement too, but before he had even pulled himself together to quit, she had moved herself to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and taken on a thousand projects at once. It was a paid internship, which Ron said was rare, and Harry was pretty sure she had a lot more influence than was normal for any intern anywhere. She was good at that sort of thing, taking charge and inserting herself where she thought she was needed. And she was doing important work. She was part of drafting the new werewolf legislation, and even though it seemed to cause her endless agony and Harry knew he could never do what she was doing, it was hard not to feel a little bit jealous sometimes.

And Ron didn’t hate the aurors. He took to it well. People liked him, both the instructors and the other trainees. And he was good at it. Better than Harry. Which was a good thing, Harry reminded himself. Harry had always known Ron was brilliant, but it was nice that other people were starting to realize it too. That Ron was starting to believe it.

Since Harry owned Grimmauld Place, there was no issue of rent. They didn’t need three incomes to make it work, and so Harry had left the aurors and Ron had stayed. And then that had become normal. The other two would go to work in the morning and Harry would hang around at the house. Sometimes he worked on trying to make the place properly liveable, to get rid of some of all the Black-family heirlooms. He had spent one very satisfying afternoon burning the tapestry with the Black family tree on it. On other days (and those days had become increasingly frequent during the last couple of months) he didn’t do anything. It was amazing how many hours could pass with not doing anything.

o

The morning after Malfoy’s strange phone call, he was woken up by the coughs and dull pounding of water rushing through the ancient pipes of the house. Not even a sliver of daylight had made it through the heavy curtains covering the window in his room and he could have easily slept three or five more hours. It had been close to three when he finally went to bed the night before. He could hear Ron banging around in the kitchen. Harry turned over and tried to sink back into sleep. He drifted off for a second, but was jolted back to wakefulness by the sound of something clattering to the floor and Ron swearing loudly downstairs. Harry groaned. He sat up in his bed and kicked off his blanket. Considering Ron had grown up in a house with 6 siblings it was actually pretty impressive that he had remained so completely unable to do anything quietly. Harry picked up the watch from his bedside table and checked the time. It was a quarter past seven, so he had gotten a bit more than four hours. Not a lot, but he was used to that by now. It had been a while since he last slept through the night.

Harry got up and picked a sweater out of the pile next to his dresser, pulled it on over his pyjamas and headed downstairs.

o

There was a beautiful dining room at Grimmauld Place, but it had taken a long time to get it lightened up, remove the ugliest paintings and the grimmer decorations. In the meantime, they had all gotten used to eating in the kitchen. Harry liked it better there anyway; it was cosy, a bit more like the Burrow. The dining room felt formal and it was too big for three people anyway.

The kitchen smelled of burnt toast. Ron was fiddling with the ancient stove when Harry showed up.

“’Morning,” he said, looking up when Harry pulled out a chair. "Did I wake you up?”

Harry shrugged.

"Sorry. I was trying to get the frying pan out of the cupboard when the toast caught fire. Everything just sort of crashed to the floor.”

“Yeah, I heard. I thought maybe a troll had gotten in here.”

Ron grimaced.

"Sorry, mate."

“You set the toast on fire again?”

“I got it right the second time,” said Ron, pointing at the stack of unburnt slices on a plate on the table. “Anyway, I still think we should get a muggle toaster.”

“Good luck finding a place to plug it in.”

“I’m sure we can get dad to help out, he’s been wanting to install a toaster back home for years, but mum won’t let him.”

“Hermione really wants us to learn magical housekeeping though…”

Ron sighed.

“I know.”

Hermione had given each of them a copy of _Basic Household Spells_ for Christmas (and had also bought one for herself, which Harry thought was a bit excessive, considering the three of them lived together). It had later turned out almost all of their friends had been given the same book, and when confronted with this Hermione had shrugged and explained how she had realized that one of the fundamental reasons for the enslavement of house elves was that adult witches and wizards were completely helpless when it came to taking care of themselves and that this was really at the root of the problem, and also “the kind of thing you can't get at through legislation”. Ron had pretended to be horrified and asked her if she seriously thought they had been conspiring to acquire a house elf behind her back. But the book had turned out to be quite useful, and having several copies wasn’t entirely pointless either, as the books lived rough lives and didn’t survive long. Harry’s copy had long ago succumbed to a botched dishwashing spell and Ron’s, though still readable, had been burned quite badly.

“Do you need help with anything?” Harry asked.

“Nah, I just wanted to fry some eggs, I haven’t had time to make proper breakfast in a while. There’s tea as well.”

Harry helped himself to a piece of toast.

"You’re not going to the Ministry today?" he asked.

Ron took the frying pan off the heat and scraped scrambled eggs onto a plate.

"No, I am, but not until noon."

"Why the hell are you up so early, then?"

Ron set the eggs on the table and pulled out a chair across from Harry.

"Went to bed early, I was awake anyway."

"Did Hermione leave already?"

"She's upstairs, wanted to go over some papers or something."

"The werewolf thing?"

"I guess so, she looked frustrated."

"Do you think it'll get passed?"

Ron shrugged.

"She says she's hopeful. But you know what the Ministry's like, even if everyone thinks it should get done as fast as possible it'll still take ages."

"Yeah.”

Ron and Harry ate their toast and Harry made more tea. A little while later Hermione's voice called to them from upstairs:

"Ron, there are some alarming sounds coming from those crates George left in the living room!"

They heard her footsteps on the stairs and a moment later she appeared in the kitchen in one of the nice sets of robes she usually wore to the ministry, her hair still damp from her bath. She always looked very adult when she was going to the Ministry. There was an unlikely, well rested air of responsibility about her that to Harry seemed unfair for anyone to possess at 19 and this early in the day.

"Oh, ‘morning, Harry, you're up early?"

"Had to check if Ron was burning the kitchen down."

"Did you set the toast on fire again?" she said, turning to Ron.

"Only a little bit. What did you say about the crates?"

"They're humming."

Ron pushed his chair back, almost knocking over his plate.

"Shit," he muttered and hurried past Hermione up the stairs.

Hermione cast a concerned glance after him.

"It'll be fine," Harry said, when it looked like she might go after him.

"Do you know what they are?"

"No, George just dropped them off yesterday."

Hermione sighed.

"Well, that's not very reassuring," she said, but she sat down anyway.

"Did you sleep alright?" she asked. "You look tired."

"I'm fine."

"You know I could make you a sleeping draught if you ever needed one-"

"I'm _fine_, Hermione. Honestly. Just went to bed a bit late. I'll take a nap later."

"Alright."

She reached for the tea and poured herself a cup.

“And I was thinking I would go shopping,” Harry said. “We’re out of pretty much everything.”

“Oh, it was my turn this week, wasn’t it? I completely forgot, I’ve been so busy-“

“Don’t worry about it, I’m not doing anything anyway.”

She sighed.

“Thanks, Harry.”

“Sure.”

She put a piece of toast on her plate and Harry passed her the butter.

"I'll be going out after dinner," he said.

"Really?" she said, a bit too excited. And okay, he didn't leave the house that often, but it still stung.

It wasn't like he was a complete shut-in.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm meeting Malfoy."

Hermione choked, spilling tea on her plate. She coughed.

"Sorry, what?" she croaked into her hand.

The stairs creaked and groaned as Ron came back down the steps.

“Crates are quiet again,” he announced. “I’ll drop them by the store on my way to work. If they blow up they should do it there-”

He broke off and looked from Harry to Hermione.

“What did I miss?” he asked.

Hermione cleared her throat.

“Well, Harry just announced that he’s meeting Malfoy tonight,” she said.

“Malfoy?” Ron repeated.

“Yes," Harry said.

“As in Draco Malfoy, the Azkaban-avoiding Death Eater and all-round prick?”

Harry grimaced.

“The very same.”

“_Why_?” said Ron emphatically.

“He called last night. On the phone. I don’t know, it was weird.”

“He _called_ us? What would he do that for?”

Harry shrugged.

“Hell if I know.”

“But why are you meeting him?" Hermione demanded. "Did something happen? What did he say?”

“He just said he wanted to talk.”

"Why couldn't you do that over the phone?"

Harry reached for another piece of toast.

"I don't know,” he said. “He wanted to meet."

“And you said _yes_?” said Ron. “Sorry if I’m repeating myself here, Harry, but _why_?”

“I don’t know. I was a bit taken aback, I guess. Do you think I should go?”

“_No_,” said Ron at the same time Hermione said “_yes_”.

They glared at each other.

“Oh come on, Ron," Hermione said. "Of course he should go. It could be important! It’s not like Malfoy would contact Harry just for the company.”

“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry muttered.

She rolled her eyes at him.

“You know what I mean.”

“What would he have to say to Harry that might be important?” Ron said. “It could be a trap for all we know.”

“Ron, why would he be setting a trap?”

“Some pathetic revenge scheme?”

Hermione raised an eyebrow.

“That sounds unlikely.”

“Yeah well, the guy’s an idiot, I’m just saying you shouldn’t waste your time on him, Harry.”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“That’s not true-“ Hermione began.

“Yeah,” Ron interrupted. “Your time is very valuable. Right now it may seem like you’re just an unemployed freeloader-“

“How can I be a freeloader? This is my house, I’m saving you guys from paying rent in London.”

“And I’m saving you from starvation, that’s my hard-earned salary you’re putting on your toast there,” said Ron, with a grin snatching the jam out of Harry’s reach.

“If you’re looking for something to do, Harry, then there is still all that stuff in the attic. We need to get it cleared out at some point,” Hermione added.

Harry grimaced.

“Yeah, if the choice is between spending the night battling whatever dark shit Sirius’ family has stowed away up there or going to a pub, I think I actually do prefer Malfoy.”

“That’s insane,” Ron said. “I’d rather spend all eternity digging through the backrooms of Borgin and Burke’s than ever have to look at his ferrety face again.”

The discussion didn't end until Hermione left for work, and Ron kept nagging until he had to leave too. And then Grimmauld Place was quiet. Harry cleared away the last of the dishes from breakfast.

He had gotten quite good at passing the time when he didn’t have anything to do. It was all about emptying your head, not thinking about anything. Except today it was very hard to make his head stay empty.

Harry hadn’t thought about Malfoy in a long time. He hadn’t heard anything about him since the trials. As far as he knew, no one had heard from him. There were lots of people from Hogwarts Harry didn’t keep in contact with anymore, but he felt like he could hardly even go outside without running into someone – magical London wasn’t that big, after all. He had even seen Malfoy’s mother a couple of times. A while back he had actually bothered to ask around about it. It had seemed odd that Malfoy would be pardoned and then just disappear, but no one knew anything, and it wasn’t like Harry cared; he had been busy with auror training back then. So he had forgotten about him, and now the git had suddenly decided to turn up again, out of nowhere. It wasn’t like Harry looked forward to seeing him – in fact, with every hour that passed he dreaded it a little more – but part of him couldn’t help but be just a little bit curious.

o

Ron and Hermione came home in the late afternoon. Harry had actually managed to forget buying groceries so they didn’t have anything for dinner, and Harry felt like an idiot for having spent his entire day napping and worrying about Malfoy instead of doing the practical things he actually had time for. So dinner was late because Harry had to apparate to the nearest Tesco and then suddenly it was 7.30 and he was already late for meeting Malfoy.

o

He hadn’t thought about it until he was walking through the endless, tiled corridors of the Tube, wind from trains rushing past at some other end of the labyrinth blowing back his hair, that he hadn’t actually used muggle transportation in quite a while. He managed to get on a wrong train twice, and it was twenty minutes past eight before he even got to the right station.

But the pub itself turned out to be easy enough to find. He spotted it as soon as he came up the stairs to the underground, right where Malfoy had said it would be, though at first Harry was certain that he must have misunderstood something. It was the right name over the door, and Malfoy had said the place was muggle, but Harry still hadn’t expected it to look this… normal. There were two windows facing the street, yellowish light seeping out from inside, and Harry could see a large television mounted behind the bar showing a rugby match. Two older men stood outside the door, smoking cigarettes. Harry walked past them, shrugging off his coat as he went inside.

The pub wasn’t crowded, but it was the sort of place that would feel cramped no matter how few people were in there; the air thick and stale, too many tables squeezed into too little space. The stools by the bar were occupied by a handful of worn, smudgy men who looked like they had lived there for the last twenty years. Harry had the urge to go back outside and check the name of the place again. Not only was it decidedly muggle, it was also not, in even the slightest way, posh. It seemed the last place in the world one would find Draco Malfoy, and Harry had just decided that it had to be some sort of misunderstanding, that it probably had been a joke after all, when he spotted him, sitting by himself in the corner, two untouched pints in front of him. He was staring emptily out the window and clearly hadn’t noticed Harry’s arrival. Harry glanced at the door. He tried to remember why the hell he was doing this. He had already taken one step back towards the exit when Malfoy looked up and noticed him. For a moment, he just stared at him, stiffening visibly in his chair, and Harry froze as well, staring back, and for a second it was like all the time that had passed since Hogwarts melted away and they were fifteen again, glaring at each other across the great hall. It felt like a lifetime ago and at the same time, being face to face with him again, it felt like yesterday.

Harry realized that despite spending the whole day worrying about this, he hadn’t been able to anticipate at all how weird it would be to see him. He was at the same time instantly recognizable and utterly transformed. Harry would have recognized him anywhere, but in this context, he was hit by the same sense of disconnect he had felt when he’d heard his voice on the phone. All these incongruous elements that had somehow been forced into the same space – Malfoy, who was so entangled with Harry’s years at Hogwarts and with the war, suddenly intruding on his post-Hogwarts, post-war life. Malfoy, who was the epitome of aristocratic, pureblood wizard-snobbery actually sitting there, in a seedy little pub in Peckham wearing a knitted grey sweater when Harry had known him for seven years and never once seen wearing anything other than robes. It was disorienting.

And Harry was almost half an hour late. He hadn’t honestly expected Malfoy to still be there. He had kind of been hoping he wouldn’t be. But there he was. So Harry took a deep breath and squeezed past the tables, making his way towards Malfoy’s corner.

Malfoy stood up as well as he could with the table and chairs being crammed so tightly in the corner.

“Potter,” he said, holding out his hand.

Harry shook it.

“Malfoy.”

Harry pulled out his chair. Malfoy sat back down. He cleared his throat.

“I'm sorry about your beer,” he said, gesturing to one of the pints on the table. “I think it might have gotten warm by now.”

Harry looked at the glass and then up at Malfoy.

“Right," he said. "I guess that's my fault for being late.”

“They’re cheap, I can go get another one if you want?“

“This is fine,” Harry said.

He stared at the glass on the table. Malfoy had bought him a beer.

“I should have given better directions, I suppose.”

“What? No, the directions were fine, I just got lost on the tube.”

Malfoy raised an eyebrow.

“Really?”

It was such a small inflection in his tone. He probably would have sounded polite to anyone else, but Harry could hear the laugh, the condescending smile that was just about to break through.

“I haven’t travelled like that in a while,” he said flatly.

Harry hadn't known what to expect but he had shown up for this determined to be civil, to at least give Malfoy a chance to say whatever it was he wanted to say. He had no idea what had happened in the last year, and anyway it had been a long time since he had actively resented Malfoy, but if he was going to be a dick, no amount of free beer would keep Harry from walking out of there.

“I suppose you rarely have reason to travel in muggle London these days?” Malfoy said, smiling overbearingly.

“Right. I don’t.”

Harry had been there for maybe three minutes and he already wanted to punch him.

“Well, I’m glad you made it. It’s been a while.”

Harry glared at him. There was still a thin smile ghosting his lips and Harry had no idea what the hell that expression was supposed to mean.

“I guess,” he said.

“How have you been?” Malfoy asked, like all they were there for was small talk.

“Fine."

“I heard you left the aurors?”

Harry winced.

“That was long ago.”

“About half a year, right? I was surprised to hear it, I thought that was just the sort of action packed, heroic career you wanted.”

“I thought so too,” Harry said, not even bothering to hide the bitterness.

He took a gulp of his beer. Malfoy turned his glass on the table, his pale fingers drawing lines through the condensation.

“Things don’t always go as we expect, I suppose.”

“No. I guess they don’t."

Harry glanced out the window. It had started drizzling. The headlights of a car cut through the darkness outside.

"What about you, then?" Harry asked stiffly. "What have you been doing?"

“Not much. I’ve moved out of the Manor, got a flat in London, I think I mentioned that over the phone?”

“Yeah, actually, speaking of that,” Harry said, straightening in his chair. “What was that all about?”

“What?”

“Why did you call me? You could have used the floo, or sent me a letter or something.”

“Well, my new place isn’t connected to the floo. And I assumed you wouldn’t open a letter from me so…”

“But how the hell did you get my phone number?”

Malfoy grimaced.

“Long story,” he said. “Very long, very boring. Favours from different people and such.”

Harry rested his arms on the table and leaned towards him.

“No, I’m serious, Malfoy, I actually want to know. If you were able find it, it might not take long for some tabloid journalist to dig it up-”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” he said, which was when Harry noticed the faint blush creeping up Malfoy’s neck.

“You're sure?”

“Yes, I’m bloody sure, Potter. Merlin, you’ve gotten paranoid.”

Harry leaned back in his chair, eyeing Malfoy.

“Got pretty good reason to. I swear, if Witch Weekly starts calling my house about interviews I think I might actually elope somewhere, like they keep writing I’ve done.”

There was definitely a blush. Malfoy's ears were getting pink too – what the hell had he done to get that number?

"And why did you call me in the middle of the night?"

Malfoy cleared his throat.

“I may have been slightly drunk. So, where are you living at the moment?”

Harry narrowed his eyes.

“Wait, are you actually here to get private information about me? Did you somehow become a journalist since the last time I saw you?”

“I’m trying to be polite! You really are paranoid, honestly, why would I be that interested in you?”

Harry crossed his arms.

“Sure,” he said. “Fair point. I live at Grimmauld Place.”

“The old Black family-“

“Sirius left it to me.”

“I see.”

He waited for Malfoy to go on, but he didn't. Considering that Malfoy was the one who had asked him to come here, Harry felt like he was carrying more than his weight keeping this conversation going.

“What about you?” he asked, not because he actually wanted to know but because staring at Malfoy in awkward silence was actually worse than listening to him talk.

It seemed a pretty harmless question, but Malfoy shot Harry an irritated look, as if he was overstepping some line, as if Malfoy wasn't the one who had started this awful prying smalltalk in the first place.

“It’s not too far from here," Malfoy said. "Just a normal flat.”

"There's a wizard community here?"

"No. It's muggle."

"Really?"

Malfoy shrugged.

“Magical London isn’t that big. So are you living alone or with Weasley or…?”

“Ron and Hermione live there too.”

“Not the Weasley girl?”

“No. She’s in Wales.”

“Right, the Harpies, I forgot – really impressive. You know, I heard the two of you had split up?“

Harry froze.

“Sorry, what?” he said.

Malfoy didn’t look up, his eyes were fixed on his glass. His tone had gone up just a bit when he asked about it, a little too casual not to sound forced.

“You and Weasley-“ he started again, but Harry cut him off:

“Yeah, I heard you. What the fuck do you care about that?”

“I just heard, and I thought since you two were such a picture perfect couple-“

“I don’t care what you thought," Harry snapped. "That’s personal. You don’t get to ask about it just because you read an article in some shitty gossip column.”

Malfoy held up his hands placatingly.

“Sorry, sorry! Calm down, I was just-“

“Being polite?”

Malfoy hesitated.

“Actually, why are we even here?”

“You mean in this pub?"

Harry glared at him. He was suddenly incredibly done with this whole thing. He should have listened to Ron. This had been an awful idea.

“You asked me to meet you," he said. "Why? What’s with the small talk? I think we can safely assume neither of us is here for the pleasure of the company, so why don’t you drop the niceties and tell me what this is about?”

Malfoy straightened in his chair and finally stopped fiddling with his glass.

“Sure,” he said. “I forgot how little you care for manners.”

Harry glared at him. Malfoy cleared his throat.

“To elaborate a bit on what I’ve already told you, I’ve been… restructuring my life a bit over the last year. I've moved out of the Manor, found a job, you know, things are going well. So I've had some time to reflect on what happened during our last years of school-”

“During the war," Harry interrupted.

Malfoy shot him another irritated glance.

“Yes. During the war. I know we never really got along when we were at Hogwarts, and my family was- _I_ was on the wrong side during… the war. I didn’t expect any help from you when I went to trial. You didn’t owe me anything.” Malfoy stopped to clear his throat. “And I realized I have never properly thanked you for that.”

His speech was getting more and more stilted, going from regular posh to something that sounded actually prewritten and rehearsed.

“Your mother already thanked me,” Harry said.

“I know. I just thought…”

Malfoy stopped. He looked down at his hands on the table.

“I have pretty bad experience with letting my parents speak for me.”

Harry snorted. Malfoy's eyes snapped back to him and Harry quickly wiped the grin off his face - he hadn't meant to laugh, he just hadn’t expected Malfoy to actually say something honest in the middle of all his bullshit. Harry cleared his throat.

“Right,” he said.

Malfoy kept looking at him, like he was waiting for Harry to actually say something.

“Well, it was all a long time ago,” he tried.

Malfoy took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair.

“Depends on how you look at it.”

Of course it depended on how you looked at it. Of course it wasn't actually very long ago. Harry still had nightmares about Voldemort, he still slept with his wand next to his pillow, he still sometimes thought of things he wanted to talk to Lupin about before he remembered he was dead. This wasn't about that. This was him telling Malfoy as politely as possible that he would rather not look at it at all.

“Look, it’s fine," he said, biting back the sharper words that were queuing up in his mind - Malfoy seemed to be actually trying to be civil, and Harry knew he would feel like an idiot later if he didn't at least try not to hex him. "I get that you want to-“

“I know it’s too late to try to change anything," said Malfoy quickly. "That’s not what I’m doing. I just wanted to see you and say thank you."

"Right," Harry said.

"And I wanted to apologize.”

Harry slowly counted to five in his head.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

Harry slumped back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair.

“Look," he began irritably, then cut himself off. He took a deep breath. "It’s… I don’t know what to tell you, Malfoy," he said. "It’s fine. It was a long time ago.”

Move on. That was what he wanted to say. That was what he was trying to do. And he supposed it was nice that Malfoy wanted to apologize, it was just that Harry had no desire to be there for it. It wasn’t like it was Harry’s job to absolve him of anything. And if Malfoy wanted to apologize, Harry was pretty sure that _he_ shouldn’t be first on the list. He wasn’t going to tell Malfoy that. He didn’t care what Malfoy did. But if he apologized one more time – well, there were limits to how long he would sit there and keep saying “it’s fine”.

But apparently, Malfoy was done.

“Right,” he said quietly.

Harry glanced down at his watch. It had been hardly twenty minutes. He wasn't sure if it would be rude to leave already, but if Malfoy had said what he wanted to say-

“I honestly didn’t think you would come.”

Harry looked up at him.

“Sorry?”

“I just… didn’t expect you to show up.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“Because you couldn’t figure out how to use the tube?”

Harry almost breathed a sigh of relief at the insult - at least that meant they were done with the apologies.

“Yeah, I guess," he said. "I could almost pass for a pureblood.”

Malfoy smirked.

"Oh, definitely."

Harry took another drink from his beer. It was pretty lukewarm, actually. And flat. He hadn’t noticed before.

“I thought you would have moved abroad,” he said, putting the beer back down.

“I can’t. Part of my sentence.”

Harry raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t remember that," he said.

Malfoy just shrugged.

"How the hell have you been in London this whole time?”

“Well, I live here.”  
Harry glared at him.

“I mean, why does no one know? As far as I know, no one has seen you in… I don’t know, the last year?”

“I got a muggle job.”

Harry choked on his beer, which he had unthinkingly kept drinking from.

“What?” he coughed.

Malfoy rolled his eyes.

“I know, I can’t believe it either.”

“So you’ve got a muggle job, and you live in a muggle neighbourhood and go to muggle pubs-“

“Yes. And you know, I hadn’t expected you of all people to be so shocked about it.”

“I’m not shocked, I’m just… surprised. And not because of the muggles, it’s just that you’re… you.”

Malfoy pulled a face.

“Yeah well, things change,” he said.

He picked up his glass, drained the last of his beer and stood up before Harry could ask what that was supposed to mean.

“Okay, I’m done,” Malfoy said. “You’ve been looking like you wanted to leave since the second you stepped in here, so I’m not going to keep you any longer."

They put on their coats and left the pub. There were quick, awkward goodbyes outside, where they both pretended it hadn't been weird. Malfoy thanked Harry for showing up, Harry said it was nice to see him and Malfoy said it back, and Harry wasn’t sure if he might have meant it, but then Malfoy was walking away up the street and Harry was heading back to the underground, and he realized it didn’t matter, because he was never going to talk to him again.

o

Harry wasn't particularly angry when he left the pub. The irritation snuck up on him when he missed his train by a few seconds and had to wait another fifteen minutes on a bench next to a loud group of drunk teenagers, who were pretending to push each other onto the tracks, shrieking loudly and setting his nerves on edge. Harry looked down at the scuffed toes of his sneakers and tried to tune out their voices, but then Malfoy's face slid back into his mind, formal and apologetic and Harry wished he hadn't let him off so easily. He should have asked what Malfoy wanted from him, why he had decided to call him out of nowhere, why he had decided to do it _now_. He went over their conversation in his mind and realized that despite Harry having asked him about a thousand questions, Malfoy had hardly answered a single one.

By the time he made it back to Grimmauld Place, he had let himself slip into completely rewriting the pointless conversation in his head. He had had no reason to be polite to him, he should have let himself yell everything he had ever wanted to yell at Malfoy, at least_ that_ would have gotten them somewhere, would probably have resulted in a duel, and possibly Harry would have been able to get a punch or two in there as well.

Harry slammed the front door behind him and kicked off his shoes next to the troll-leg umbrella stand (Ron had insisted they keep it). Harry was two steps up the stairs when he heard movement from the living room.

"Hermione?" Ron called out.

Then he emerged in the doorway and his face split into a grin.

"Oh, hey, you're back early! How did it go?"

Harry glared back at him and Ron's grin faltered.

"That bad?"

"It was fine," Harry snarled.

Ron raised an eyebrow.

"Doesn't look like it was fine," he said in that disarming, unimpressed way of his, and Harry's anger deflated a little.

They had known each other too long for Ron to be fazed by Harry's anger. Harry took a step back down the stairs. He leaned against the wall.

"He wanted to apologize," he said tightly.

"And he was a git about it?" Ron guessed.

Harry grimaced.

"No, he was very _polite_," he said, unable to keep the sneer out of his voice. "He was so fucking civil about it, hardly even insulted me_ once_ \- and we met at a muggle pub, and he looked… it was fucking bizarre."

"What did he apologize for?" asked Ron.

"Being a dick?"

Ron didn't laugh. He crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, frowning up at Harry.

"Alright,” he said. “I mean, I don’t want to pry. I’m just trying to figure out why you look like you want to feed him to a blast ended screwt if all he did was be polite and apologize."

Harry waved a hand irritably.

"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know what he wanted from me. His mum already thanked me for being at the trials, so I don't know why he was bringing that up again."

"Maybe he wanted to do it himself?"

Harry scoffed.

"Could have done that half a year ago too."

Ron sighed.

"He's a fucking peacock, Harry. He probably spent that half year getting over his pride enough to actually talk to you. Don't waste your energy on him. You don't owe him anything and you went to see him anyway. We've done more than enough for that little shit already."

"I guess," Harry said.

Harry crossed his arms, mirroring Ron. He was tired and he wanted to sleep, but there was a thought that had been nagging him ever since he got on the tube.

"Did you know I still have his wand?” he asked.

It was another thing he hadn't thought about in months, had actually totally forgotten until seeing Malfoy's face had triggered the memory. Ron looked surprised.

"You do?"

"Yeah. I was supposed to give it to him after the trials, but there wasn’t really a chance, so I just sort of forgot."

"Did he ask for it?"

"No," Harry said. "I only remembered it again on the way back."

"So…" Ron said, when Harry didn't say anything else. "What about it?"

"I don't know. I guess… Do you think I should give it back to him?"

Ron shrugged.

"Hermione would probably say it's the decent thing to do, but honestly mate, I don't think it matters."

Harry glanced up the stairs.

"Is Hermione home?" he asked.

"She's working late."

Harry nodded. Ron kept watching him silently from the door. Harry pushed off the wall.

"I'll just check for the wand upstairs," he said. "I think I know where it is."

"Harry-" Ron began but Harry cut him off:

"I'll be quick, alright?"

"Alright," Ron said. "Just… try to get some sleep tonight, yeah?"

"I'll be quick," Harry repeated, and then headed up the stairs.


	3. Chapter 2

Draco said goodbye to Potter outside the pub, and started on his walk home. It was freezing. At some point he had convinced himself that this meeting would be a good idea. That he would feel better after this. It had made such a nice, compelling narrative: facing Potter, thanking him, apologizing, doing the right thing, and then he would be able to move on, feeling lighter and freer.

He didn’t feel light. He was tired. Tired and more disappointed than he cared to admit. Not that it had been awful exactly, but the whole thing, seeing Potter's face again, trying to navigate what he could and couldn't say, it had just felt… _flat_.

He felt like he might fall asleep while walking. He was slightly drunk too, and his mouth carried the corpse-like aftertaste of shitty beer.

He reached his building, dragged himself up the stairs, switched on the light and dropped his keys on his desk. He was already halfway to the bathroom when the phone rang.

“Hello?” he said, picking up the receiver.

“Draco, is that you?” sang Pansy’s sharp, all too energetic voice.

His phone was in the small kitchen area of the flat. He hadn't switched on the light, he stood in the dull, streetlit half-darkness feeling like an idiot for talking aloud in an empty room. He still wasn't used to muggle technology.

“Who else would it be?” he asked with a sigh, leaning back against the counter.

“Could be anyone,” she said. “I’ve no idea how this contraption works. Your voice doesn’t sound like you at all. How does it know those numbers are you?”

“No idea.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me use this thing. Why don’t you just get a floo-connection?”

“I don’t have a fireplace.”

“Muggles, honestly-“

“Pansy, I'm kind of tired," he interrupted. "Did you want something, or did you call me just to complain about calling me?”

“I was just longing to hear your sweet voice. I haven’t heard from you in nearly a week. How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all evening.”

“Out.”

“No shit. With who? Your new muggle friends?”

“I met with Potter.”

She laughed.

"Okay, sure, how was it?"

"I'm serious."

There was a beat of silence.

"Draco, if you're fucking with me-" she began.

"I'm not."

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

"Yeah."

“You actually got him to meet with you? How?”

“I called him.”

“_Holy shit_, Draco. I can’t believe you actually did it - I’ve told you about a million times that you need to get over him!"

Draco winced.

“I _am_ over him!" he snapped. "It wasn’t about that. I needed some closure so that I can-“

She sighed, loud enough that he could hear it as a crackling rush over the telephone.

“Spare me. I’ve heard your whole little spiel before.”

“It’s not a _spiel_-“

“How can you say you're over him when it's been actual years since you had anything to do with him and yet you're _still_ buying Witch Weekly just so you can keep up with the gossip?"

"I do not-"

"Oh, _please_," she cut him off with that heavily condescending tone of voice she reserved only for discussions about Draco's current life situation, specifically designed to convey in every syllable how exasperated she was with him. "About half the time we actually talk to each other, it’s because you want to hear my opinion about whether or not some new rumour is true or not. Don't try to lie to me - I mean, you’re free to stay in your state of denial if that's what you want, but please don’t try to convince me you are not still absolutely obsessed with him.”

“I hate you.”

“Of course you do," she said sweetly. "So what happened? How did it go?”

“I thought you didn’t care?”

Her quiet huff sounded odd and distorted over the phone.

“When did I say that? You met with Harry Potter, most famous wizard in Britain, your childhood crush and your self-proclaimed nemesis, in what universe would I not want to know how it went?"

Draco buried his face in his hand.

"I am seriously reconsidering every intention I had of telling you about it," he said.

"Draco," she said primly. "I have endured _years_ of mind-numbingly tedious Potter speculations from you, and now that something interesting has actually happened, you don't want to share it? I _deserve_ this."

He sighed.

"It went fine, I suppose. I said what I wanted to but - do you remember that pub near my flat I've mentioned? I asked him if we could meet there since it's near the tube station - that's the underground trains I've told you about - anyway, I thought it'd be easy for him to find so… not that it made a difference, though, he was half an hour late, but the place is _awful_. I don't know what I was thinking, it looked alright from the outside, but the beer was terrible and the place was filthy, I don't know what he must be thinking of me…"

"Honestly, when it comes to Potter's reasons for not thinking well of you, I think your poor taste in pubs ranks quite low."

"Thanks, that's just what I needed to hear."

"You know I'm always here for you."

"I'm cursed," he sighed.

"Exactly. But in all seriousness, are you alright?"

"I'm fine. It wasn't… It wasn't exactly what I hoped for, but I got to say what I wanted. It's over."

"It's over?"

He shrugged.

"I guess it has to be."

"Because Harry Potter said so? Now you're just magically going to be ok?"

"Why not? I can't keep carrying this shit around."

"I've been telling you that forever."

"I know, I just… I need to do it my own way."

"You say that, but look at what you're actually doing with your life. Are you going to come back to us now?"

"What? No. No, I'm not-"

"So talking to Potter _hasn't_ fixed everything?"

"I didn't say it would," he snapped. "I needed that talk, but that doesn't mean I'm coming back."

"Merlin, how long are you going to keep punishing yourself?"

"You think that's what I'm doing? I couldn't keep sitting around the Manor waiting for things to go back to normal, Pansy. They are_ never_ going to go back to normal!"

The last part came out too loud, too shrill. The flat was suddenly very quiet around him. There was pointed silence on Pansy's end of the phone. He took a deep breath.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's fine. I know you're angry. You've got every reason to be. Just don't take it out on me."

"I'm sorry."

"I miss you," she said.

He sighed and leaned back heavily against the kitchen counter.

"I miss you too."

"You should come by tomorrow. I haven't seen you in forever.”

“I can’t. I have work.”

She sighed.

“We really need to talk about that.”

“No, we don’t.”

"I don't get why you're doing it, Draco. You don’t _need_ to. You could borrow money from me or from Greg or-“

“We’re not having this conversation again.”

“Fine. Whatever. Come see me when you have some free time, okay? Don’t forget me just because you’ll be best mates with Harry Potter now.”

“Hilarious."

“Take care of yourself, alright?"

"Alright. I really need to sleep now. Goodnight, Pansy."

"Goodnight, Draco."

He hung up, but lingered in the kitchen for a little while. He felt all of a sudden incredibly homesick. Not for the Manor, he had no desire to go back there ever again. It was a more general homesickness. For a life he didn't have anymore. For the way he used to feel about his house when it had both of his parents in it and he still trusted that the things they had taught him were true.

He missed having Pansy nearby. It wasn't like he didn't understand her frustration with him and he wished he could explain it properly to her. But he had tried and it always ended up with one of them angry or hurt or both. When he spoke with her this rarely, it wasn't worth it to have it end in a fight every time.

He poured himself a glass of water, drained it and then headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He did need to sleep. Despite his best efforts to avoid it, he had ended up with a morning shift, and if he didn't get at least seven hours he would definitely end up murdering someone before he was halfway through the day.


	4. Chapter 3

Draco woke up in a bad mood. The dull sting of the failure of the night before still lingered in his gut. The flat was cold, the sky outside heavy and grey, the light somehow lightless. He flipped back his covers, stumbled to his closet, pulled out his black shirt, his black jeans. He let his fingers brush over the soft, expensive fabric of the robes on the hangers, not worn once in several weeks, and the last time it had just been for that one evening at Pansy's place. He missed wearing wizard's clothes. There were practical advantages to muggle fashion - he did not fancy facing the tube rush hours in a cloak - but at least they were_ tailored_. There had been some unpleasant encounters during his first days in the muggle world with store assistants who had kept repeating to him that his stupid, tight and uncomfortable trousers were _his size _and him trying to explain that they were definitely _not _before he had finally understood that "your size" did not mean "they will fit", it meant this was as close as he would get. There was definitely some irony to be found there. It was such an awfully appropriate metaphor for his whole life at this point. And he supposed it was really quite amazing how little time it had taken to get used this constant state of slight discomfort; being uncomfortable in his clothes, in his home, in his job and in his skin.

Of course, it could be worse. It had been worse.

He'd moved out of the Manor a little over half a year ago. The trials had ended another half year before that. His father had been sentenced to life in Azkaban, while he and his mother had only been given mild sentences. There had been a huge fine to pay as reparations, certain restrictions on their personal freedom, but they'd been allowed to return to Malfoy Manor, no longer under house-arrest.

There had been a short period of numbness after that. Draco hadn't left the grounds of the Manor much, hadn't really seen anyone. He'd developed a creeping anxiety of staying inside and had spent his days going on long walks in the surrounding countryside. And in the night, he'd returned to the house and to his room to spend endless hours slipping in and out of sleep, in and out of claustrophobic dreams of the days when they had shared their home with Voldemort. There were locked rooms they would never use again; he had avoided them in the daytime but inevitably ended up there in his dreams: the cellars where they had kept prisoners, the dining hall where Voldemort had held court, the bedroom he'd sometimes disappeared into and where he'd presumably slept. The aurors had taken special interest in those rooms of course, and there was hardly anything left in there save for the wallpaper and the curtains. There had been fewer searches than in the period before the trials, but they'd still happened once in a while. Draco had felt like a ghost, trapped in the gloomy halls of his gutted childhood home.

He had tried talking to his mother about it, about what had happened during the war and the trials and the time he'd spent at Hogwarts. And then he had stopped trying, because he couldn't stand how she kept promising that things would be fine, that everything would be back to normal soon enough, like it was somehow possible, somehow _okay_ for them to return to the way things had been before. He'd watched her steadily and steadfastly beginning to reassemble their life, rebuilding their reputation and washing her hands of the last few years of loss and tragedy and humiliation. She'd reached out to the friends they still had left, extending and expecting sympathy. He had no idea what version of the story she'd presented them with, but he was sure it was very compelling. It wouldn't be long before she found some sympathetic journalist willing to hear her story too, and then the networking would turn into even more of a public performance, and even that would just be the beginning. As soon as they got their money back there was sure to be charity balls and generous donations and posturing for the press, and so Draco had resolved to get out of there before any of that happened.

At first, he'd moved in with Pansy at Parkinson Park. Of course, that hadn't been a permanent solution, but she'd been glad to have him, and talking to her had been a bit easier than talking to his mother. And at some point during that time, the idea had taken shape. The perfect solution.

When he'd first thought of it, he'd expected it would be a matter of a couple of weeks to get his things in order, but the bureaucracy had turned out to be endless. He'd even gone back to the Manor again for a short period of time, while he'd waited for his papers to go through. The Ministry was in disarray ever since the war had ended. They were still flushing out Voldemort sympathizers; suddenly everything needed to be reformed, and every procedure went even slower than it normally did as they struggled to get things back on track. There were all sorts of paperwork needed to apply for jobs in the muggle world, as well as for becoming eligible for renting a place to live, numbers and signatures he needed in order to even be considered an existing human being in muggle society. And there had been interviews too, and more instances than he could count of people telling him that it really wasn't recommended for people of purely magical background to attempt integration into muggle society, that the cultural shock might be more than he could handle, especially when he didn't have any close contacts who were muggle or muggle-born, and that the process itself was quite complicated because of the statute of secrecy, which was why it was usually reserved for squibs, and it would really be easier for him to just move to a wizarding society abroad.

But he'd managed it eventually. He'd gotten his shitty little flat and a shitty job at a bar, which he'd thankfully replaced with a slightly less shitty job in a coffee shop. He'd learned how to use the tube and the phone, ignored the disapproving letters from his mother and settled into his new life. And it wasn't that bad. It was fine, as long as he didn't think too far ahead. He had his flat and his job, a couple of new friends, some contact with his old friends, but he knew he couldn't return to the wizarding world. He didn't have a muggle education either, and no hope of being approved for getting one. There was no way to move forward, and that thought was so hard to get rid of. Even on good days, it was there, constantly nagging in the back of his mind. Things were fine. It was just that his whole life felt temporary.

o

"You're late, Draco!" Chris snapped at him the second Draco stepped through the glass doors.

"I almost got run over five times on my way here," Draco said waving a hand dismissively in his direction. "Just be glad I made it."

He hadn't known Chris was on this shift too. All those precious hours of sleep had been for nothing; the day would end in homicide after all.

"It's not my fault you don't know how to cross a fucking street."

"Leave him alone, Chris," said Irie, appearing from the back room. "Draco, just go get an apron, we open in five."

Draco nodded and hurried past the counter, shooting Chris an icy glare that went tragically unnoticed. He slipped into the back and pushed his bag into an empty spot in the corner, shrugging off his coat and folding it on top.

Most of his friends from Hogwarts had found out he had some kind of muggle job, but Pansy was the only one who knew what he actually did. She had been laughing herself into hysterics thinking about him saying "good morning" and "how may I help you?" to perfect strangers all day, and he had fed her with stories of his misery, but he never told her about this: that when he went into the tiny closet they called the back room and put on his stupid, green apron, he became invisible. When he went back out there and stood behind the counter, he wasn't Draco Malfoy to anyone. None of them knew of his father or his family, they didn't know about the war or about Voldemort. Even if they came in every single day, most of them wouldn't even remember his face. He was Draco to his coworkers, and to everyone else he was just the bloke at Starbucks who handed them their coffee. And it was such a relief every single time.

o

By the early afternoon, the grey clouds of the morning had disappeared and it had turned into a beautiful, sunny October day. He spent a nice five-minute smoke break outside feeling quiet and at ease. Sadly, it wasn't quite as peaceful when he went back in. The afternoon rush hadn't set in yet, but there was still a steady stream of customers and Chris left for his break as soon as Draco came back, so he and Irie were kept busy. And the thing about direct sunlight and big glass facades was that it became quite uncomfortable to work right next to the big coffee machines and the milk steamer and the sandwich heating contraption.

"Why is it so fucking hot in here," Irie muttered.

"Appreciate it while it lasts."

"I'll appreciate it when I get off work, but the weather might as well be shitty if we're trapped in here anyway - hello, how can I help you?"

Draco rolled up his sleeves. He usually never did, never wore short sleeves on anything, and kept his arms covered at all times. But it was awfully hot in there, and he was at work, he was wearing his apron and he was invisible. Irie had seen the mark before anyway. She'd told him it was a cool tattoo.

She passed him another cup with a nearly illegible name scribbled on it. He mechanically pumped in the syrup and steamed the milk and went to pass it to one of the customers hovering by the counter.

"Vanilla latte for… Emma?" he said.

"Yeah, that's me," said a girl.

He handed her the cup. He had just been moving something about on the counter, the cup just happened to be in his left hand. He wasn't really paying attention. Her fingers closed around it and he let go, and then she wasn't holding it, it slipped from his grip and hers and the whole thing dropped, lid coming off, coffee spilling everywhere.

"Shit, I'm so sorry-" he said, already reaching for a cloth to wipe it up when he noticed her face, the expression of absolute horror, and that she wasn't looking at the coffee flood at all.

And everything inside him froze. He still had his arm stretched out towards her and her eyes moved ever so slowly from the mark to his face. Draco felt his lungs collapse, his heart dropping into his stomach. Her mouth was moving but for a second no words came out.

"You fucking monster," she hissed.

"Please, I-" he began, but she cut him off.

"Is that real?" she pointed at him, her voice rising, he finally got enough control of his body to yank his sleeve down. "Is that fucking real? Why are they letting you work here?"

She turned to Irie and Chris, who had stopped in the middle of whatever they had been doing and were staring wide eyed at the spectacle, at the spilled coffee and the screaming girl and Draco who stood frozen and silent in the middle of it.

"Do you know what he is?" the girl yelled at Irie. "He's a fucking Death Eater! He's a murderer!"

Then her head snapped back to Draco and suddenly there was a wand in her hand, he hadn't even seen where it came from. She raised it at him, her face contracted in fury, and then someone was at her side, another girl who had materialized from somewhere in the store. She grabbed the girl's arm, forcing her wand down.

"Emma, stop it," she hissed. "Stop it, there are muggles here."

"He's a Death Eater!"

The other girl glanced at Draco, but she didn't let go of her friend.

"We need to leave," she said quietly, insistently. "Come on. Now, Emma!"

She dragged her friend away from the counter, but then Emma twisted free of her grasp.

"Emma, don't-" her friend grabbed for her, but she was too quick and in two steps she was back by the counter.

Draco fumbled for his wand, but she hadn't raised hers and she didn't hex him. She leaned over the counter and spat at him. Then she spun around and stormed out of there, her friend hurrying after her.

Draco stood rooted to the spot and watched them go.

Slowly, he raised a hand to his face and wiped the spit off his cheek.

There was a light touch on his shoulder and he flinched away from it. Irie was looking at him with confusion written all over her face. He blinked, looked past her at every face in the store now turned to him, all of them staring open mouthed, confused, disapproving and suspicious.

"Draco-"

Draco stepped back from her and yanked off his apron.

"I need a cigarette," he said and stalked out of there.

He heard Chris mutter when he passed him: "What the actual fuck."

o

He practically kicked the door open in his hurry to get outside, and then slumped against the wall, dragging in breath after ragged breath, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He felt like he was falling, like the world had dropped away from under him. His throat was painfully tight. He wasn't going to cry.

Eventually, he would have to go back in there. He had two hours left before he could go home. He swallowed hard, straightened up and pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. His fingers were shaking.

He was not even halfway through his smoke before the door was opened and Irie popped her head out.

"Hey Draco, I know that was some odd shit before but we're pretty busy in here, so could you maybe hurry up?"

He nodded stiffly.

"Thanks," she said, vanishing back inside.

o

The last hours of his shift passed like weeks. Chris and Irie didn't ask about it, just pretended nothing had happened, only casting wary glances in his direction when they thought he wasn't looking. He kept his sleeves pulled down. He was an idiot for having been that careless. And it had started out as such a perfectly okay day too. He had even managed to halfway forget about Potter for a while, but then here was his past and the fucking magical world intruding on him, and suddenly Potter wouldn't leave his mind, and now Draco had to watch all of this through his eyes, and it became so pathetic to him, the way he wasn't really friends with his coworkers, and was actually bad at his job, and had fucked up the coffee machine twice so he had had to ask Chris for help, and even Irie became too impatient with him to keep up any pretense of sympathy.

o

When he was finally done, he felt completely drained. His feet were sore from standing up that long and it felt like he hadn't slept in a year just from keeping himself together. He dragged himself to the underground, wishing for the thousandth time that there were fewer restrictions on apparition in London. It was ridiculous how deep his gratitude was when he was lucky enough to get a seat on the train. He sank back, stared emptily ahead of him as the train shot through the tunnels hollowing the ground beneath London.

He hadn't quite believed it when he’d first heard that the tube system was muggle made. Of course, it had seemed too great a feat of magic to simply abandon, but still… He had asked around about accidents before heading down there, made sure that it was safe, but it had been hard to get used to. He still wasn't entirely comfortable riding it yet, despite using it almost daily at this point, but if you didn't think too hard about it, it did sort of feel like magic. And if you did think about it, he supposed it was just plain impressive.

He zoned out, thoughts drifting back to the coffee shop, and then to the girl, and then, inevitably, to Potter. He put his hand over his left arm and rubbed at the mark with his thumb - he couldn't feel it through the fabric, but every so often there was an imagined itch, a slight burning… Between the bodies of the people standing in the middle aisle, he caught a glimpse of his own face reflected in the dark glass opposite him. He looked scruffy and worn and exactly as tired as he felt. The shock had mostly lifted, but there was still that lump of sadness in his gut.

Fucking Potter had looked absolutely perfect when they met - a bit ruffled, a bit awkward, his hair had been an awful mess, but somehow that had just added to the square-jawed heroism of his overall appearance, that he could be that careless and still look that good.

Draco looked like shit these days. He shouldn't have tried to see Potter again. He should have kept the mark covered. He should have known he couldn't stay hidden.

He wondered if it was time he just gave up on this whole thing and went home.

He breathed out deeply and closed his eyes for a moment. Why had it all turned out this way? This was never how his life was supposed to go. He wasn’t supposed to end up like this, penniless and lonely and queer and living like a squib, slowly losing contact with all of his old friends and on top of all that, still unable to get over his stupid school time crush.

How fucking sad and pathetic it had all turned out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess this is technically a coffeeshop AU now?


	5. Chapter 4

Harry apparated into a deserted, grey street. It was early afternoon, but the light made it seem like evening already, the skies were heavy with rain and the days had already become so much shorter since summer. Worn down brick buildings with curtained windows stared down at him from either side of the road. Harry fished the note out of his pocket and checked the address again. It was the right place he had apparated to, but maybe he had written it down wrong… He scanned the numbers on the houses, then headed towards number 10. If this wasn't the right place, he would just go home, take it as a sign from the universe that this was a bad idea.

There was a worn plastic entryphone by the door, peeling labels with the names of the people living there next to the doorbell. And there at the bottom was one that said "Malfoy". Harry stared at it. He had begun to hope that he had made a mistake, that he could just go home to the warmth of Grimmauld Place and feel that at least he had made an effort. But this was apparently it. He hesitated, finger hovering over the button, then took a deep breath and pressed it down.

A second passed and then another, and then there was a static crackling from the little plastic speaker.

"Yes?" said Malfoy's distorted voice.

"Malfoy, hi, it's Harry," he said.

"Harry who - wait, are you shitting-" the connection cut off, and then Harry was left standing there on Draco Malfoy's doorstep.

He considered ringing the bell again, but then he honestly didn't fancy trying to persuade Malfoy to let him in. He dug his hands deeper into his pockets, his fingers finding the wand. He was doing Malfoy a favour here, and if he didn't want it, well then that was his own problem.

Harry had just turned away to go back down the stairs when he heard the lock snap and the door was yanked open.

"Did you apparate here?" said Malfoy.

He was slightly out of breath. He looked dishevelled, his hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and his shirt crinkled like it had been left on the floor overnight. And he was wearing jeans - apparently there was not going to be an end to the absurdity any time soon.

"Yeah," Harry said. "I-"

"Right to my fucking doorstep?"

"Yes?"

"Why would you do that?"

"Er, well I came here to-"

"This is muggle London, Potter!" Malfoy hissed. He gestured to the street: "You can't just apparate anywhere you want, someone could have seen you!"

Harry had braced himself for some level of surprise on Malfoy's part when he showed up here unannounced. He had lined up arguments in his head, or excuses, though to be fair they had vanished the second Malfoy's voice came out the entryphone. Anyway, they wouldn't have helped him. He hadn't exactly expected his method of transportation to be the thing Malfoy would have issues with.

"Relax, Malfoy, the weather is shit. No one's out."

"Like the Ministry cares about that! There's an apparition point in an alley at the other end of the street, why on earth wouldn't you use it?"

"I didn't know it was there."

"It's not a difficult thing to check-"

"Alright! Look, I'm sorry, okay? Bloody hell, when did you start caring this much about Ministry regulations?"

"Since they started jumping at every little chance they get to get me in trouble, Potter. I'm not exactly popular with them at the moment."

Malfoy ran a hand through his hair.

"Shit," he muttered.

"What's the problem? _You _didn't apparate illegally, I don't see why you're getting your pants in a twist."

Malfoy glared at him.

"The problem, Potter, is that now they're going to send someone over to follow up on this. I'll have to deal with tons of bureaucracy, and they're pretty fucking uptight about the statute of secrecy these days."

"Yeah. Like I said. Shouldn't that be my problem if I'm the one who apparated here?"

"Their tracers are location based. This is my address. What will I tell them, "oh, it wasn't me, it was Harry Potter"? Who in the world is going to believe that?"

"I'll tell them."

"Right, you'll just hang around here until they show up and then politely explain the situation?” Malfoy said scathingly. “I'm sure that's exactly how you want to spend your afternoon."

Harry shrugged.

"I guess I'll have to," he said.

"Exactly, so-" Malfoy stopped, his annoyed expression giving way to surprise. "What?"

"I'll talk to them."

Malfoy eyed him suspiciously.

"It's not as if they'll be here any second," he said.

"So I'll wait."

"It might be a couple of hours."

"Okay then."

Malfoy hesitated, then glanced past Harry out into the sad, wet street.

"I don't suppose you're going to be generous enough to wait out here, are you?"

"Not a chance."

"It would spare us both from what I can only assume will be an awkward time in unpleasant company."

"I'm not going to sit on your doorstep for two hours, Malfoy. It's bloody freezing out here."

Malfoy sighed.

"Fine, then. I can't believe this is happening."

He took a step back, holding the door open, and Harry stepped inside.

Draco led him up the stairs. He stopped on the second landing.

"This is mine," he muttered. "Just put your shoes by the door."

The flat was tiny. It was basically one room, with the kitchen part sectioned off by a wall with an open doorway and the rest of it doubling as bedroom and living room. There was a book case squeezed awkwardly into one corner, with more books stacked on the floor next to it. There was a messy bed and a dresser in another corner of the room and a tiny, antique looking couch, a coffee table and reading light by the window. It was a very strange flat. It was crammed and worn and not a lot of light came through the window, but it wasn't _old_, and yet all the furniture in there looked ancient. There were ornate carvings on the bed, the upholstery of the couch looked like velvet or something like that, and Harry was pretty sure the silver handles on the dresser were shaped like tiny snakes. But then right next to that sort of antique grandeur there was the kitchen which was plain and IKEA-like and muggle, and the curtains were an odd mustard yellow with an ugly tartan pattern and a couple of stains that were clearly visible even from across the room. He didn't know what he had expected. It wasn't like he had spent much time imagining what Malfoy's flat would look like, but he really hadn't thought it could be anything other than immaculate, pristine and polished. He should probably have stopped thinking he knew what to expect from Malfoy after the pub. Or at least after the jeans.

Also, he had definitely not considered that when he insisted he wouldn't wait outside, that meant he would end up in Malfoy's bedroom.

He had decided before leaving home that he would be quick and efficient about this - give Malfoy his wand, be civil, but leave as fast as possible without any unnecessary niceties. That resolve was quickly dissolving, and he found himself wanting badly to apologize for barging in like this, for looking at a room that he was obviously not supposed to see, but Malfoy was glaring at him, chin raised and eyes narrow, like he was daring him to say anything, so Harry didn't. He stepped out of his shoes and shrugged off his coat.

"Do you want tea?" Malfoy asked stiffly.

"Sure. Thanks."

"You can hang your coat by the door."

Malfoy switched on an electrical kettle in the little kitchen. He opened a cupboard over the sink, taking out a teapot and two delicately painted china tea cups.

"You can ask, Potter," he said, without turning around.

"What?"

"About the flat. I know it's shitty, and you're wondering why I live here. You don't have to pretend otherwise."

Malfoy was moving jerkily, Harry was sure the paper thin cups would shatter, the way he slammed them on the counter.

"Right…" Harry said.

Malfoy reached for a box of tea bags in a cupboard and it dropped onto the counter, spilling its contents into the sink.

"Shit," Malfoy muttered.

"Do you need help?"

"No," Malfoy snapped. He picked the teabags out of the sink. "Oh, Draco," he said in a loud, simpering voice, as he dropped them in a pile on the counter, next to the half empty box. "I can't help but wonder, why are you living in this extraordinarily shitty flat in a neighbourhood with a name as unbelievable daft as _Peckham_?"

"I didn't ask."

"Well, maybe you should," Malfoy said. "It's called making small talk. It's polite."

Malfoy's voice was acidic. Familiarly so. Harry watched the way Malfoy's bony shoulders rose, the way he kept fiddling with the tea rather than turn around.

"Okay," he said. "Sure. Why do you live here? I thought you got your house back."

Malfoy's shoulders stayed tense, but his movements stilled.

"We did," he said.

"Alright."

"I went home after the trials. Then I decided that I would prefer not to live there any longer."

Malfoy dropped a teabag into the pot. Harry waited.

“Why did you want me to ask if you’re not going to tell me?” he said finally.

Malfoy sighed.

"All our assets are still frozen,” he said. “My father was involved in a lot of things, not all of them quite legal. It's taking them a while to sort out how much of our fortune they still think belongs to us.” He laughed a small, mirthless laugh. “Or I guess how much they can get away with taking. So I needed to find something… affordable."

The last word came out reluctantly, with the slightest hint of a sneer. The kettle clicked and Malfoy poured the water into the pot, and Harry realized he couldn't keep hovering by the door much longer. Reluctantly, he left the safe, neutral space by the shoes and the coats and crossed through Malfoy's living room to join him in the tiny kitchen space. Malfoy glanced at him, but his eyes quickly returned to the teacups. He reached out and turned one of them, his fingers resting on the edge.

"It needs to brew for a bit," he said.

Harry leaned against the wall. There was a microwave in the kitchen. Harry couldn't remember the last time he had seen one of those. It had probably been at Hermione's parent’s house, but he hadn't visited them in forever. He really didn't spend a lot of time in muggle homes anymore.

"How long have you been living here?" he asked.

Malfoy shrugged.

"Half a year, give or take."

"Seems like you've really gotten the hang of it," Harry said, eyeing Malfoy's clothes.

Malfoy shot him a vicious glare.

"Yes. Turns out I'm surprisingly adaptable."

He poured the tea, which was still too thin, and handed Harry his cup.

"And then there is just a never-ending supply of leaflets from the Ministry," he continued. "They're still sending them every now and then, even though I've gotten the hang of everything from “light switches” and “jeans” to “stoplights”. I honestly don't see the point, I mean I'm practically qualified to be a muggle studies professor by now."

His tone suggested he was making a joke, but he didn't look like he found it funny.

"They send you leaflets if you rent a muggle flat?" Harry asked.

"Apparently. Hold on, I’ll let you see for yourself."

Malfoy put down his cup and fished a stack of brightly coloured leaflets from behind the microwave, then handed them to Harry. Harry looked at the top one, then glanced back up at Malfoy, who was watching him intently with the same look in his eyes he had had when Harry had first entered the flat: like he was daring him to comment, like he wanted to hear him make fun of him.

Harry turned his attention back to the leaflets, and slowly he began to shuffle through them. _Understanding electricity - how muggles handle the non-magical life_ was the title of the first one. It had a picture of a light switch on it, the switch being flipped up and down and a light bulb going on and off next to it. The next one was _The Wizard's guide to the London Underground_, and after that was _Applying for muggle jobs - achieving success in the non-magical workplace_, then _Buses, cabs and apparition points: transportation in muggle society_. Harry wondered why no one had bothered to send him that last one, or at least told him that there were laws about where in London it was okay to apparate. He flipped to the final leaflet and scoffed involuntarily.

"_Interacting with muggles and passing as one of them_?" he read.

Malfoy snatched the leaflet out of Harry's hands.

"It's not as straight forward as you might think. You should have seen the looks I got the first time I asked someone for a quill. And actually, can you explain that to me - why do we spend galleons and galleons on self-inking quills when muggles have already invented _pens_ that cost next to nothing and are at least as good?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know."

"I mean,” Malfoy persisted, “one would expect some of the muggleborn to have brought them along, right? Honestly, I never want to use a quill again. Did you know the ink dries almost immediately after you've written something?"

"Uh.…yeah," Harry said.

"It's amazing."

There was a slightly manic glint in Draco's eyes, right behind the sneering irritation, and for a second he reminded Harry absurdly of Mr Weasley.

"Yeah, I suppose it is," said Harry lamely.

He would never understand how someone who knew about magic could be excited about pens. He had never minded using quills at Hogwarts. He couldn't imagine writing a transfiguration paper with a regular ballpoint.

"I need a cigarette," said Malfoy suddenly.

"What?"

"Hope you don't mind," he continued, already walking away from Harry.

"No. That's fine," Harry said. "You smoke?"

"I've got a muggle job, Potter,” Malfoy said, undoing the window latch. “Very hard to get through without cigarette breaks."

Malfoy pushed the window open and fished a crumpled cigarette packet out of his pocket. He put a cigarette between his lips and then, to Harry's surprise, pulled out a lighter. He cupped his free hand around the flame and inhaled deeply. On the exhale he twisted his body halfway out the window, though most of the smoke drifted into the room anyway. He put the lighter down, and Harry followed it with his eyes. It was made of blue plastic. It was the second time within 10 minutes that Harry had seen Malfoy use muggle technology for things any wizard would do by magic. And both times had been casual, not like he was doing it because Harry was there, to prove a point or something, but without thinking about it, like it was a habit. And well, maybe if it had been some other wizard, Harry wouldn't have found it odd. Maybe if it had been someone muggleborn or someone like him who had lived in the muggle world for a long time, who had had reason to develop habits like that. But this was _Malfoy_, and despite having seen him in his muggle clothes and his muggle flat, Harry still hadn't really believed that he actually lived like this. It was so far removed from everything he knew about him, and he couldn't understand _why_ he was doing this.

And then Harry remembered the 10 inches of hawthorn that were still lying in his coat pocket. He watched Malfoy blow smoke out the window again while an awful, twisting feeling settled in his gut.

"Malfoy do you… do you not have a wand?" he asked.

Malfoy turned and frowned at him.

"What?"

"Your wand-"

"Of course I've got a wand, I was pardoned, remember? Got a new one after the trials. Not from Ollivander, of course but… well. It’s perfectly adequate."

Harry nodded, the knot of guilt loosening, but the confusion lingered.

"Why aren't you using magic, then?" he asked.

Malfoy frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"If you've got a wand, why aren't you using magic? To light your cigarette," he added, when Malfoy just looked puzzled. "Or to boil water."

"Well, the muggle solutions work fine," Malfoy said with a shrug. "And you know, I might want to have muggles over one day and still be able to offer them a cup of tea or smoke a cigarette if I want, it really pays to know how these things work, Potter."

"Because you have so many muggle friends."

"How do you know I don't? I have colleagues, and… oh, fuck it," Malfoy cut himself off, the nonchalance of his tone falling away. "I'm allowed to do magic, but it's being monitored, so I've been trying to minimize it. The Ministry likes to use the statute of secrecy as an excuse to harass me."

"How? You aren't breaking the statute if you're just here by yourself."

Malfoy’s mouth twisted irritably as he blew another breath of smoke into the room, not bothering to turn to the window this time.

"Tell that to them,” he said. “They like to come check for themselves. They like to make absolutely sure that there are no muggles around who might have seen - they'll check all the cupboards and turn over all the furniture to make sure no one is hiding in there. They’re a very thorough bunch. Last time they took my kettle. It was noisy so I'd put a silencing spell on it. _Misuse of muggle artefacts _they called it.”

“Sounds like you have a lot of people who don’t like you working in the Ministry.”

“Yes," Malfoy said, taking another deep drag of his cigarette. "You know, I think I liked corruption better back when it was mostly about giving my family special privileges.”

It was a strange thing to hear him say. Because the tone was so familiar, so similar to the endless, pampered whining Harry had had to endure when they were at Hogwarts together, except it was ironic and self-deprecating and almost… well, it was kind of funny.

"You know those can kill you, right?" Harry said.

"Privileges? Don't think so, I had them for ages."

Harry suppressed a smile.

"Cigarettes,” he said.

"Oh. Yes, it says so on the packet.” Malfoy gazed out the window, looking pensive for a moment. “You know, you should start smoking, Potter. It would make a beautiful headline: _Boy Who Lived dies young from smoking - the killing curse couldn't take him, but muggle stimulants did_."

Harry bit his lip.

"Yeah,” he said, “that would be hilarious.”

Malfoy was stubbing out his cigarette on the ledge outside, but Harry thought he saw a smirk on his face right before he turned away.

"You don't have to stay hovering in my kitchen, you know," he said, glancing back at Harry. "You can sit down, I won't hex you."

"Right," Harry said.

He picked up his cup and went to sit down on the couch. Malfoy stayed on the sill and lit another cigarette. There were a couple of newspapers spread out on the coffee table.

"Still get the Prophet?" Harry asked.

Malfoy shrugged.

"I like to keep up."

One of the papers was open to an article about the living conditions in Azkaban. There was a picture too, a dark tower in the middle of a stormy sea, and shadowy cloaked figures floating in the air around it. Harry reached out and closed it, and there beneath it was Ginny, staring up at him from a glossy magazine cover. _Witch Weekly_ was printed in bold letters above her face, and right beneath that was the headline that had left Harry with reporters at his heels every hour of the day for two awful weeks: _Heartbreak! Ginny Weasley's lesbian affair! Harry Potter sidelined for Welsh quidditch star!_

It took a second before Malfoy noticed what he was looking at.

"I don't read that," he said quickly. "Pansy must have left it here or something."

"Sure," Harry said.

He flipped the magazine open to the page of the article. There was the picture of Heather and Ginny. It had been taken from afar and the quality hadn't become better by being plastered over half a magazine spread, but you could still make them out: the two of them in their uniforms, walking off the field after a match, Ginny with her arm around Heather's shoulder, leaning in to kiss her cheek. And next to them was some awful portrait of Harry that he was pretty sure was a lot older than the one of Ginny, but he supposed they didn't bother hunting him down for pictures of his angry face any more - they must have at least a couple of hundreds stowed away in their offices by now. _Harry Potter refuses to comment__!_ it said beneath his sour expression.

He leaned back on the sofa. Malfoy was staring out the window again, expression blank.

"It's alright," Harry said. "You can ask."

"About what?" said Malfoy, face turned towards the window.

"Me and Ginny. You already asked at the pub."

"I don't want to pry,” he said primly.

Harry sighed.

“It’s fine, I don’t mind talking about it. I just don’t like when people think they’re entitled to my private life just because they’ve already read about it in a magazine. Just because the journalists don’t give a shit about my privacy doesn’t mean it’s a fucking free for all, but… yeah, whatever, it’s fine.”

“Well, that certainly makes me want to ask."

“Ginny and I broke up almost a year ago.”

It felt strange saying it out loud. Malfoy's expression didn't change.

"I see," he said.

"Yeah."

"Impressive you've been able to keep it a secret."

Harry shrugged, pretending he couldn't feel his heart rate picking up. It hadn't been a secret. It really hadn't. He just hadn't told anyone; telling Malfoy was the first time he talked about it to someone who wasn't in his immediate circle of friends. It hadn't been a secret, but it had been something people didn’t need to know. They knew the media would be all over it when they found out and neither of them wanted that.

"We weren't even trying that hard, we just didn't… you know, announce it or anything."

"Amazing. I would have sworn neither of you even knew the meaning of being discreet," Malfoy said, taking another drag of his cigarette and blowing the smoke out the window.

Harry didn't say anything. He supposed it was meant to be a jab at him, but it was sort of true. Historically he hadn't been very good at keeping out of the media's searchlight, though it wasn't for lack of trying. They had probably just been lucky. Lucky that it had been a quiet break up, that neither of them had found other people in the time after, that they had enough friends in common that they had still been seen together fairly often. That last part had been a bit weird too of course. Thankfully, their friends had known how to keep their mouths shut about it, but when all his friends were Ginny's friends too it was hard to really talk to any of them about it. And he couldn't talk to Ron either, obviously, and Hermione would probably feel awkward about it too, so he just didn't bring it up.

Ginny had been such a big part of what got him through the war, the one good thing he knew he had waiting for him if he managed to survive, and then it had been so undramatic for them to drift apart. They had gotten back together after the battle, and it just hadn't been the same as before the war. They had both been more distant, more careful, and he wasn't sure if it was because of what they had been through or if it was because he had left her behind. He’d never figured out how to ask her about it. They hadn't fought or anything, except for the row about Snape, but that had been months before they’d ended it. They hadn't fought, they just hadn't talked much, either. And then when Summer had ended, she’d gone back to school, and things had just… faded out. They had broken up officially when they’d both come to the Burrow for Christmas, and they had managed to keep it on the down low and out of the papers until a couple of weeks ago, when the thing with Heather had happened.

"So it isn't true?" asked Malfoy.

Harry looked up at him.

"Is what true?"

"That she was cheating on you?"

Harry flinched.

"No," he said. "Of course not. That is literally the only thing I've told the reporters. I don't know why they don't print it, they're usually so eager to publish any dumb thing I say."

That spin on the story had definitely been the worst part of it. And Harry hated that it didn't come easier to feel sorry for her, he knew first-hand how awful it was to have everyone believe things about you that weren't true, but he was still… maybe he was still a bit angry with her. Not because she had found someone else - Harry wasn't in love with her anymore and he knew it had to happen eventually - but because he’d had to find out about it through Witch Weekly just like the rest of the Wizarding World. He’d been completely unprepared when the first reporters came for him. Of course, she’d written him immediately after it came out, and it wasn't like she’d intended for everyone to know yet but… It wasn't like he had any right to be angry. He was just being petty about it.

"But she's gay, then?" said Malfoy airily.

Harry shrugged.

"I guess."

"Huh."

Malfoy stubbed out his cigarette and looked back at Harry, his expression bored, like he had just been indulging Harry by talking about it. He cocked his head.

"What about you, then?" he asked. "Do you have some secret girlfriend hidden away somewhere?"

"No."

He smirked.

"Boyfriend?"

"No!"

Malfoy rolled his eyes.

"You have got to start living a more interesting life, Potter. The poor reporters are practically starving. Maybe I should leak your address after all. You know, just to spice things up."

"I think I deserve some peace and quiet, actually."

"Oh sure, you _deserve _it, but I can't imagine you enjoy it. You didn't manage to go through one year of school without _someone_ trying to off you, I imagine peace and quiet has left you bored half to death. What have you even been doing since you left the aurors?"

Harry shrugged.

"Avoided Ministry invitations and the press," he said.

Malfoy raised an eyebrow at him.

"And I've been back to Hogwarts a couple of times," he added. "Helped out with the reconstruction, stuff like that. They're pretty understaffed this year, so there's been lots to do."

"Really?"

"Is that surprising?"

Malfoy paused.

"No, I guess not,” he said. “I just thought the place might hold some bad memories for you."

"Good ones too."

"I suppose."

"Have you been back?"

Malfoy laughed drily.

"No, Potter, I have not. I haven't even set foot in Diagon Alley in half a year. I'll be dead before I go within fifty miles of that castle again."

"Bad memories?" Harry asked, turning the suggestion back on him. Which was a dumb thing to do. Malfoy had started it, but Harry didn't want to have that conversation. He knew exactly what bad memories Malfoy had of Hogwarts. Bringing it up felt like pushing the fragile peace that currently hung between them towards an edge - their conversation at the pub had been lurking in the corners ever since Harry had stepped into the flat, but they were both skirting carefully around it, keeping it casual, keeping it light, avoiding the serious shit that would make spending even half an hour in the same room unbearable.

"Sure," said Malfoy carefully. "Anyway, I don't think I would be very welcome… you know, considering the role I played. I doubt anyone would be very happy to see me there."

Harry looked away, willing himself not to say anything sharp about "the role he played".

"Right," he said tightly.

He heard Malfoy pull the window shut. He didn't leave his spot in the sill. It had gotten chilly in the flat. Harry cleared his throat.

"So, when do you think the ministry people will be here?"

"I don't know. How long has it been?"

"Half an hour, I think."

"Might still be a while."

Harry nodded. Quiet settled between them. Harry glanced around the room, searching for something else to talk about, but once again every topic felt loaded.

"Do you still play quidditch?" Malfoy finally asked, after a too long silence.

Harry relaxed a little. That was safe enough.

"Not really," he said. "We've played some games in the field near Ron's house when we've been to visit but… yeah, nothing serious."

"Do you miss it?" Malfoy asked.

He wasn’t quite looking at Harry, but he wasn’t looking away either. He was drumming his fingers restlessly against the cigarette package in his hand.

"Sometimes," Harry said. "I go flying pretty often."

He had also gotten to coach some of the first years for their flying lessons one time when he went back, since Madam Hooch had retired after the war. He had liked that. They’d all been so excited. And they were so tiny. He couldn't believe he had been that small the first time he flew a broom.

"You know, honestly, if you aren't going the auror-way, I'm surprised you haven't taken the same route Weasley did," said Malfoy. "Try to go pro. You were quite good."

"I wasn't that good."

Malfoy turned to him with a blank stare.

"Potter, I heard even Krum said you were good," he sneered. “False modesty isn’t charming.”

Harry shrugged and looked away. It wasn't like he hadn't thought about it when Ginny signed with the Harpies. He probably could have gotten a spot on any team he wanted. That’s what people had said, anyway. But he would never know if it was because he was actually good enough, or just because he was famous. Because he was a _hero_. Besides, he’d had enough media attention for a lifetime, and playing quidditch professionally, as great as that might be, would just mean more of it. He didn’t want that.

And then, there was also the other, less rational reason. The one he pretended didn't matter, the one he didn't talk to people about. It wasn't like Malfoy was the first one to suggest it; Harry had been good, he knew that. But even when he had considered it, he could never see himself actually being part of a team. The idea of joining a whole new group of people like that scared him to death. It probably wouldn't be that bad, but he hadn't really… he hadn't actually had to make any new friends since he started Hogwarts. He distinctly remembered the triwizard tournament, how awful he had felt around Fleur and Krum and Cedric; younger and less qualified and unfit to be there and always, always on the outside. And the three of them hadn't even known each other. The thought of having to join a team who had played together for years, who were all friends with each other and who would have ideas about who Harry was and opinions about all the things he had done wrong and all the things they thought were heroic, people who hadn't _been there_ for any part of it, who would never be able to understand… he wasn't sure he could do that.

"Well what?" Malfoy prompted when Harry trailed off.

"Well, being good at Quidditch in school isn't the same as playing professionally," said Harry.

"There you go again," Malfoy sighed with exasperation. "Being perfectly humble. Bragging a little bit doesn't _hurt_, Potter. Merlin, you're so fucking _decent_, it's unbearable."

"I guess one of us has to be."

Malfoy groaned.

"I swear, it'll take weeks to get the Gryffindor out of the air in here."

"You've got snakes carved into your coffee table, Malfoy. I think you'll manage."

"They're wyverns, you uneducated-"

A loud, mechanic beeping interrupted him and they both started. A second of silence and then it beeped again. Malfoy slid back to the floor and hurried to the door. He pressed the little button on the speaker.

"Yes?" he said.

o

The Ministry had only sent one employee to deal with the transgression, and it didn't take long to get rid of him.

He was already lecturing Malfoy before he had even come through the door, preaching about the importance of secrecy for wizards living in muggle areas, and how this was especially important after the war, where so much magic had become noticeable, and if Malfoy couldn't respect that, his permissions would be revoked - and then he stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of Harry. His entire body seemed to deflate and Harry almost felt bad for him - his confusion was something tangible in the room, and Harry could see him struggling to wrap his head around the situation: the idea of Harry Potter (the Boy Who Lived, war hero) in the home of Draco Malfoy (Death Eater, disgraced) was obviously absurd.

Harry pretended he hadn't noticed. He shook the guy's hand and explained about the apparition. He didn't even get to say that he would happily deal with the consequences, the man was already waving it off as a trivial matter, and Malfoy was rolling his eyes.

Malfoy closed the door after the man when he left.

"Well, that went smoothly," he said. "I don't think even my father used to get off with that little effort, and I'm pretty sure he was bribing or blackmailing half the Wizengamot more or less continuously."

Harry grimaced. He had gotten somewhat used to people being star struck by him. He was good at shouldering through; enough one-syllable replies usually made people stop. And it wasn't so much that it was bad when people did it, it was just a little embarrassing and it felt undeserved. But this was different. This was the Ministry, acting like the law didn't apply to him just because of who he was - and that wasn't just embarrassing. It made his skin crawl.

"It'll wear off," he said, hoping it was true.

Malfoy huffed.

"Probably, but I do think you should consider robbing a bank or something while it lasts."

"Already tried that, actually. It isn't very fun."

Malfoy raised his eyebrows.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"What?"

"You robbed a bank?"

"Yeah, Gringotts. It was during the war - actually, never mind," Harry cut himself off.

He didn't want to go into that - he still felt dirtied somehow for getting off the hook that easily. He wasn't about to arm Malfoy with the fact that he had also been let off the hook for bank robbery.

"Yes, of course," said Malfoy, rolling his eyes. "Why am I even surprised?"

Harry cleared his throat.

"Well, I guess I should… I should probably just get going."

Malfoy looked surprised for a second, as if he had momentarily forgotten that this was why Harry was here; that Harry wasn't just hanging out in his apartment. It was odd.

"Oh, right," he said, stiffening visibly. "Of course."

He turned around, picked Harry's jacket off the coat rack and then stopped, just for a second, hand hovering before him.

"Here," he said, almost shoving it at Harry.

"Thanks."

Harry pulled on his jacket and shoved his hands into his pockets - and then his fingers closed around the wand. His stomach dropped. He had completely forgotten about it. He had forgotten the whole reason why he was even at Malfoy's place in the first place.

"Malfoy…" he began.

Malfoy had already pushed open the door, holding it open awkwardly, and for a second Harry considered just taking that opportunity; rushing out and going home and pretending none of this had happened. He couldn't do that though. He needed to get this done. And then he could go home and never think about it again.

"Actually - I should have just done this while we waited for the uh… the Ministry guy, but - I guess you have a new wand now, so I suppose it doesn't matter much, but I wanted to give you this back."

He pulled the wand out of his pocket. He had ended up spending half the night looking for it and had finally found it stowed away with some of his old Hogwarts stuff. It had been greasy with fingermarks and dusty too, so he'd polished it and wrapped it in a cloth before going to see Malfoy. Now he kind of wished that he hadn't. It looked too nice, like it was some sort of gesture. He watched Malfoy fold back the cloth and gingerly take the wand.

"Oh," he said, staring at it while he turned it between his fingers.

"Yeah, that's why I came," Harry said. "I've had it since the war, and I just figured, you know, after our talk, that I should probably give it back."

"I see," Malfoy said.

"Yeah, so I guess I'll… go then."

Malfoy looked quickly up at him, a strangely open expression on his face, and a thought flashed through Harry's mind, that this was what Malfoy looked like when he didn't think people were watching - when he didn't have time to put on a smirk or a sneer. He looked different.

"Yes," Malfoy said, and the expression lingered, his voice was absentminded. "Right. Thank you."

Harry nodded.

"See you around, then," he said and slipped out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that it's totally a mess with the chapter titles when the first chapter is a prologue but the rest don't have titles apart from their number (this whole "chapter 4: chapter 3"-business) - if anyone knows of a more elegant solution to this, please let me know!


	6. Chapter 5

Draco was quite proud of himself that he only felt awful about Potter's visit for about two days. Well, actively, constantly and mind-numbingly awful. He still cringed whenever the memory resurfaced. Merlin, the idiot was so incredibly unpredictable. Sure, Draco had sort of looked forward to their meeting at the pub, and it hadn't been perfect, but it had been… well, dignified, at least. And then Potter had shown up on his fucking doorstep less than two days later. He had seen the flat. Even Draco's friends hadn't seen the flat. Draco was acutely aware of how sad the place was. He should have burned the curtains as soon as he moved in, but then he would have had to get new ones and somehow that had seemed an insurmountable task, and after a while he had just sort of stopped noticing them. That only lasted until the second Potter stepped through the door and Draco had to see it all through his eyes. And now that was how Potter would remember him, in his washed up, depressing muggle home.

Not that it mattered how Potter remembered him.

Part of him even wished Potter had stayed with the Weasley girl. Then Draco would probably have followed Pansy's advice and actually made an effort to move on. Instead he had seen that magazine article, had realized that Potter wasn't going straight down the road to contented, Weasley-esque domesticity, and the stupid idea of Potter, heartbroken and adrift, had spread in his mind like a plague. The idea that maybe he could see him again, maybe he could show that he was different now, that he had grown up at least a little bit, that he had left the Manor and then… then nothing. He knew Pansy considered him completely delusional when it came to Potter, but it had been a very long time since he had managed, even in the privacy of his own mind, to take it beyond anything other than chilly forgiveness. A slightly better ending. Turned out even that had been too far-fetched.

He put the old wand away in a drawer and tried to forget it was there.

He didn't tell Pansy about Potter's surprise visit. She might have sensed that there was something he wasn't telling her, but it was easier not to cave under her pointed questions when she was just a voice on the phone.

Anyway, it wasn't worth talking about. Potter didn't matter. What were the chances even that Draco would ever run into him again? He had his life carefully structured by now so that he hardly ever needed to pass into magic London. He moved on. He went to work. He bought groceries and went drinking at muggle pubs with his muggle colleagues. Irie never brought up the incident with the Dark Mark again - she was a good person in that sense. He was sure she would have been a Slytherin if she had gone to Hogwarts.

o

A week after Potter’s visit, Draco was meeting Irie and a couple of the others for their usual routine of beer and small talk that would turn to gossip that would turn to lewd jokes that inevitably led to all of them staggering home when they were too plastered to be coherent. He was on his way out when the phone rang. For a fleeting second he had the ridiculous thought that it might be Potter. It wasn't.

"Where the hell are you?" snapped Pansy before he had even gotten through the second syllable of hello. "You are about half an hour past fashionably late and deep in the territory of outright rudeness."

"Late for what?" he said, glancing at the clock.

"_Late for what?_" she repeated scathingly. "Blaise's birthday, you scatter-brained arsehole!"

Draco's stomach dropped.

"Did you actually forget?" she said.

"I-" he began - he did remember her mentioning it now, he hadn't_ forgotten_, it had just slipped his mind that it was _today_.

"Merlin," she sighed. "You're unbelievable."

"Sorry," he said.

"Just get here. And think of some excuse for why you weren't on time, I do not have the patience for Blaise being sulky about it the whole evening," she said and hung up before he could reply.

Draco hesitated by the phone for a moment. He considered calling her back and telling her he wasn't coming. He didn't care about Blaise's fragile ego, she could tell them he was sick and they could choose to believe that or not. But despite Pansy's flair for drama, there was a chance she was actually genuinely upset with him for not being there. It had been nearly a month since he last saw her, which was bad even by their current standards. He left the phone where it was and went to change into robes.

o

Shortly after Draco had left the Manor, Pansy had moved out of Parkinson Park and into the family's town house in London. It was an old wizarding neighbourhood and every house had an apparition point, a small luxury that Draco had never expected he would be this jealous of. At least tonight, it allowed him to be less late than he already was. He apparated to the pavement immediately across from of the old house and allowed himself only a small moment to straighten his robes before he crossed the street with even steps, forcing his shoulders down, his pace to be relaxed. He rang the door and a moment later he was let inside by a house elf, who took his coat and called him Master Malfoy, and led him down the hall to where the others were already spread out in the lovely parlour with glasses of mead and firewhisky in their hands. There were candles lit and the furniture was lovely, if a bit too baroque for his taste, and the whole scene was so achingly familiar Draco forgot for a second that he didn't want to be there. Daphne shrilled and jumped out of her seat at the sight of him, and Draco noticed the way Blaise's eyes slid approvingly over the cut of Draco's robes, and none of them actually asked why he was late, so maybe Pansy had already come up with some excuse for him. He sank into a chair and accepted the glass that was handed to him and tried to remember how to do this, how to be this version of himself. He used to love their parties. He loved exchanging looks with Pansy when Blaise's smug bragging got too grandiose, he loved Greg's horrible jokes, and Tracey's quiet laugh, but after weeks and weeks around muggles he felt like he was seeing double, the scene simultaneously the most normal thing in the world and completely foreign to him. He had gotten so much quieter now that he spent most of his socializing in contexts that required him to carefully edit his vocabulary to clear it of anything magic, and the habit lingered. And what would he have to say to them anyway? They all had careers and love lives and promising futures; Draco only had vague half-truths and amusing muggle anecdotes, and those took careful wording too, to edit out any actual facts related to his job or his flat or his new friends.

Still, he decided, it was nice. The wine was excellent. Pansy claimed the seat next to Draco when Daphne got up to go to the bathroom. She made a big show of mourning Draco's wardrobe.

"It's too cruel," she sighed. "You have to wear all those ugly, ill-fitting things when you are able to look _this good_ in proper robes."

o

Draco was well past tipsy and on his way towards solid drunkenness when Tracey asked when they were planning on heading to the pub. Draco looked surprised from her to Pansy.

"We're going out?" he asked.

"Of course," Daphne said. "You think I got this dressed up for you?"

"Where are we going?" he asked.

They were all getting to their feet around him. Draco stayed stubbornly seated on the couch.

"The White Fox," Tracey said.

Draco's fingers tightened around his glass.

"Surely not," he said.

They all looked at him. Pansy was the only one who didn't seem surprised. She looked impatient instead.

"Why would we go to the Fox?" he asked.

Daphne shot a confused look at Blaise.

"Uh, because they have good drinks and that's where we're most likely to find a party?" she said.

Draco put down his glass.

"Alright. I'll head home, then," he said.

He didn't mean to sound petulant - they had had a good time, if the others wanted to go to a pub, of course they should. Pansy rolled her at eyes at him.

"Draco, seriously, this is getting ridiculous," she said.

"It's my birthday," Blaise added. "You can't go home now!"

"If we go to a pub, I'm going to get extremely pissed and be pathetic," Draco said severely. "I don't want people to talk."

Blaise laughed.

"Despite what you were raised to believe, Draco, the world does not actually revolve around you," he said. "No one is going to give a griphon's ass if they see you being pathetic in a pub."

The knot in Draco's chest tightened. He wasn't doing this to be dramatic, he didn't _want _them to persuade him to go. He cast a pleading look at Pansy - she knew how he felt about this, she could make them leave him alone. But Pansy just raised an eyebrow at him and there was no pity in her eyes.

"People talk," Draco insisted.

"Do you hear yourself?" Blaise said. "You're not Harry Potter, for Merlin's sake. So what if a couple of people who thought you'd fled the country find out you're still in London? I promise I'll drag you out of there if you try to sing, but you would have to embarrass yourself pretty extravagantly if you're going to spawn the kind of gossip you seem to imagine your mere presence will cause."

Draco looked around the faces in the room. They were all watching him impatiently. They did not seem inclined to let him leave.

"Well, then," he said.

Blaise grinned and grabbed his arm, pulling him to his feet.

"It's the truth, and you know it,” he said. “Now pull yourself together and stop being a spoilsport."

Draco sighed.

"The Fox it is," he said.

Blaise clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"See," he said, "you're pathetic all the time, no one is going to notice the difference!"

o 

Draco hadn't set foot in Diagon Alley in months, and he hadn't really had many chances to go out drinking with his friends since they had come of age, so most of his experiences with pubs were from muggle London. Still, despite his squib-like existence, he had heard of the Fox. Pansy had mentioned it often enough, he had heard it in passing even when they were still at Hogwarts, and apparently the wide reputation of the place matched its popularity: it was packed. Their little group hovered by the door as soon as they had gotten inside and unwound scarves and shrugged out of their coats while trying to scout out a free table. It was noisy in there, drunk laughter occasionally rising from some group or another, loud enough to be heard over the general din of music and voices. It was hot in there too, too many bodies in too little space. Pansy put a hand on his shoulder for balance as she stood on tiptoes and tried to spot if there was room for them anywhere.

"We might have to go somewhere else," said Daphne.

"I think there's a table in the back," Pansy said, taking Draco's arm and dragging him with her.

They were halfway across the room when he saw them. He noticed Potter first - Draco had spent too many years seeking out his face in a crowd to miss it now - but then his eyes moved on to the fiery red hair of the next person in the booth, Weasley, who had his arm around Granger, and next to and across from them were Finnigan and Thomas, Lovegood, Longbottom, Patil (both of them), Boot and Bones. Draco stopped dead in his tracks. Pansy's hand tightened around his arm as she tried to keep steering him forwards.

"Ignore them," she hissed.

So she had seen them, then, she had just hoped he wouldn't. A second later, Blaise and Greg caught up with them.

"Why did you stop?" Blaise asked, looking around.

Then he too caught sight of the Dumbledore's Army veterans. He grimaced.

"Well shit," he muttered.

"We're leaving," Draco said, pulling away from Pansy.

Blaise put a hand on his chest to stop him.

"Draco, seriously-"

"I said I'd go with you to a normal pub," Draco hissed. "But you could have told me that it was going to be a bloody Hogwarts reunion party!"

"How was I supposed to know they'd be here?

"We're leaving!" Draco insisted.

It would only be a matter of seconds before the Gryffindors or one of their hangers on would notice them - Tracy and Daphne had joined them too, they were a big group, and the place might be packed, but they were currently standing pointlessly in the middle of the room, blocking everyone's way, and Draco was trying not to let his panic show. It was only the knowledge that it would just make the situation worse that kept him from physically dragging his friends out of there.

"Of course we aren't," said Blaise and jostled him forwards.

Pansy strode past as if she hadn't even noticed the Gryffindors, Greg kept his head down and followed her, and Potter and his mates seemed too engrossed in their own conversation to notice, but then Longbottom looked up and caught sight of Draco. He stopped in the middle of whatever he had been saying; the grin slid off his face and the others turned to follow his gaze. Draco locked eyes with Potter, whose expression was frozen and unreadable. Draco felt Blaise's hand on his arm. He ducked his head and hurried towards the table Pansy had claimed for them in the back.

o 

Their table was too close to the Gryffindors for Draco to be able to relax. He had his back to them, but they were loud, their voices carried. He couldn't hear what they were talking about, but he could easily make out Potter's voice, Potter's laugh amongst the others. He had the prickling sensation of being watched, but he couldn't turn to look in case he was right.

"You're sure you're not going to start drama?" Blaise asked, sounding more hopeful than concerned.

"What?" Draco said - he hadn't been keeping up with the conversation.

Blaise nodded past him.

"With the Gryffindors," he said.

Draco scoffed.

"Of course not. I don't even want to be here."

"Right, because you're dramatic. I saw the way you and Potter glared at each other when we passed - do you really still have that grudge going?"

The mark was itching under his sleeve; it had been for the past half hour. It was driving him crazy; he was considering going to the bathroom just so he could scratch it. But that would mean going past Potter's table again.

"It's not like recent events did anything to help us past it,” he said.

"It might have," Blaise said, leaning back in his chair and swirling the last of the firewhisky around in his glass. "I mean, we all picked sides during the war and that last year at Hogwarts was pretty rough, but the thing with you and Potter goes back to way before that, I thought maybe going through a war would make you see how childish-"

"How about you leave him alone?" Pansy cut him off. "Draco, why don't you go get us another round of drinks? It's your turn."

"How can it be my turn? You haven't been up there yet, Blaise hasn't been up there."

Pansy leaned in and lowered her voice.

"Right,” she said, ”but I'm sick of you sitting there like you think someone is going to hex you in the back any moment, and you've clearly sobered up too much for your own good, so stop spitting in that empty butterbeer and go get yourself some whisky."

Blaise laughed. Draco wasn't sure if he had heard her or if it was just from the expression on Draco's face. Pansy could be terribly intimidating when she wanted to. Sometimes he wished he had stuck with more compliant friends. He pushed back his chair and stood up.

"What does everyone want?" he asked.

"Gillywater," Pansy said.

"I'm good," said Blaise.

"Tracey? Daphne?"

Tracey shrugged.

"Whisky?" said Daphne.

Draco nodded, sidled out between the tables and headed towards the bar. He kept his eyes on his path, determined to not as much as glance at the Gryffindors. It wasn't even just them, he felt sure people were looking, he felt heads turning on all sides, could imagine the whispering, people's eyes on him, his back felt exposed. Pansy was right, he really wasn't nearly drunk enough.

Draco hovered at the bar waiting to get the attention of one of the bartenders. He had just made it to the front and had his elbows resting on the counter but still no one to take his order when he felt movement immediately behind him. He knew who it was even before he turned around.

"Potter," he said carefully.

Potter was scowling at him. Behind him, Draco could make out Granger watching them. He couldn't imagine she would approve of Potter accosting him like this and he really wished she had done a better job of holding him back.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Potter asked - accusatory, as always, and Draco's jaw tightened.

For a second, he had thought - he didn't know what he had expected. Not that Potter would be _happy_ to see him, of course, and he didn't anticipate any sort of warm welcome from any of the other Gryffindors or Dumbledore's Army hanger-ons, but there was a reason he had tried to meet with Potter in the first place. Pansy could think what she wanted, but all Draco had been trying to achieve, the point of the whole thing, had been to make it possible for him to go to a place like this and not have his every move hampered by the anxiety of running into Potter. He had hoped that facing him, talking to him, letting him know that he wasn't _proud_ of what he had done would allow him to walk into a room and not be met with immediate suspicion, or at least not be met with that from Potter. And when Potter brought him his wand, and they had talked and it had been perfectly civil, he had allowed himself to believe it had actually worked. Clearly, that wasn't the case. Draco gestured towards the bar.

"I'm buying drinks," he said coolly.

"Thought you said you didn't visit Diagon Alley anymore."

Draco rolled his eyes. His gut was twisting with something that felt an awful lot like disappointment and he didn't know why he had ever decided to tell Potter _anything_.

"I don't," he said. "It's Blaise's birthday, I couldn't very well turn down the invitation, but believe me when I say I would prefer to be somewhere else."

"Seamus was ready to get up and start a fight the second you guys came in."

"Well that's hardly my fault, is it?" Draco sneered.

Potter raised an eyebrow.

"Didn't say it was."

Draco turned away from him and leaned over the counter.

"Hey!" he called after one of the bartenders, knowing full well he was being rude, but at that moment he couldn't have cared less.

And he supposed sometimes standing next to Harry Potter had its perks; the bartender's irritation melted off his face the moment he caught sight of him. Draco rattled off the drinks he wanted before the gawking idiot could start asking Potter for his autograph. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the counter top and tried to ignore that Potter was still right next to him. He managed it for nearly twenty seconds.

"What are you waiting for, Potter?" he snapped.

Potter gestured to the bar.

"I'm buying a drink," he said, mimicking Draco's cool tone so perfectly, Draco ought to receive an Order of Merlin for not punching him in the face.

Draco made his way back to his friends with the drinks, slamming the tray down on the table before dropping into his chair.

"Hope you're happy," he said.

"What did he want?" asked Blaise, looking towards the bar.

"Fuck if I know."

"He really is an idiot, isn't he?" said Pansy thoughtfully. "You know, sometimes I think the two of you deserve each other."

Draco picked up his glass.

"We should get a bottle," he said.

They did. Daphne went this time, and Draco poured himself a generous glass and things got easier after the first one and even better after the second. The anger still swirled in his gut, but it became harder to keep a hold on it as his thoughts became slow and slippery. He managed to forget the pricking of eyes on the back of his neck and the noise from the Gryffindors became indistinguishable from the general clamour of the pub around them. He tuned into Pansy's gossiping and Daphne's pearly laughter instead and at some point, he started sharing a couple of anecdotes from his new insight into the muggle world, and he remembered how much he liked having his friends' attention, so he kept going and it was funny and he was in control, and Blaise looked like he was in risk of choking when Draco tried to explain rugby, and for the first time since they left the safety of Pansy's house, it was actually kind of nice.

o

Tracey went home after a couple of hours. Pansy halfway migrated to the neighbouring table to flirt with a semi-handsome guy in tacky robes, leaving Draco to converse with Greg, who was far past the point where he could string together a coherent sentence, and Daphne and Blaise, who were fawning over each other like they were 17 again. The place had only gotten more crowded as the night went on. Draco emptied his whisky and got up, which, despite her recently changed priorities in terms of preferred company, was apparently enough to catch Pansy's attention.

"You're leaving?" she asked.

"Just going out for a smoke."

Her face split into a smug, catlike grin.

"How very muggle of you," she said.

o

The wind outside was freezing, but after the stuffy air inside it was pleasantly sobering, the cold lifting some of the drunken fog from his mind. He put a cigarette between his lips, fiddled clumsily with the lighter. The flame wouldn't hold for more than a second no matter how he turned to shield it and it took him upwards of seven tries before he remembered where he was and pulled out his wand. He took a drag and felt the gentle buzz of nicotine flood his veins. He did kind of want to go home. He was tired and he wanted to sleep and the thought of going back inside the noise and the stuffiness didn't feel very appealing. He supposed he would have to go back in to say goodbye, though. Pansy would kill him if he just left.

Draco watched a group of drunk witches stagger down the street giggling loudly. He didn't notice the door to the pub opening until someone called out his name, startling him so much he nearly dropped his cigarette. When he turned around he saw Potter, of all people, making his way towards him. Draco was leaning against the wall only seven feet or so from the door, and Potter still managed to lose his footing on the cobbles twice, moving with the stumbling gracelessness of the thoroughly sloshed.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Draco snapped.

Even if the git had actually gotten it into his head to start a fight, it didn't look like he would pose much of a problem in that condition. Potter steadied himself with a hand against the wall.

"Just getting some fresh air," he said.

"That's really a phrase reserved for smokers," Draco said, content that he at least sounded more in control of his tongue than Potter did. "You're not going to vomit on me, are you?"

Potter grimaced and slumped back against the wall. He really was very drunk, clumsy and heavy-limbed, still holding a beer in his hand that he should probably give up on. It ought to have made him less attractive, Draco thought, and yet somehow it didn't. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes unfocused, his movements badly coordinated, but all of it just meant he was leaning against the wall closer to Draco than he ever would have if he had been sober. Close enough their shoulders nearly touched, and Draco wished he hadn't noticed that because now those inches between them felt burning. He looked away and took another drag of his cigarette.

"You're such a prick," Potter muttered.

"As if that's news to anyone. Are you here to tell me to stay out of Diagon Alley again? Because to be honest, your threats carried a bit more weight when you looked like you were able to stand without assistance."

Potter frowned.

"When did I threaten you?"

"You told me Finnegan wanted to beat me up."

Potter let out a breathy huff of a laugh and Draco's heart caught in his chest. Merlin, he was pathetic.

"And Hermione thinks I'm dense,” Potter muttered. “I don't know why I'm even doing this."

"Doing what?” Draco said. “Getting fresh air? Please, don't keep at it for my sake."

He really was a prick. He hated listening to himself being a prick, but at this point, Potter was practically _leaning against him_, and Draco had no idea how to handle that if he couldn't run his mouth on autopilot. And around Potter, that apparently still meant spewing out insults at every turn. There wasn't any snarky comeback from Potter, though, and when Draco glanced over at him, he had his eyes fixed straight ahead and an oddly serious expression on his face.

"Parkinson is making out with some bloke," he said without looking at Draco.

The words came out fast, determined and hardly slurred at all. Like it was something unpleasant and important he wanted to get over with. Draco watched him, waiting for some follow up that would lend that non-sequitur some sense. Potter kept staring ahead.

"Just thought you should know," he added with a shrug and took another drink from his beer.

"Why would I want to know that?"

Pansy had practically been in the guy's lap when he left and it had been pretty obvious where things were headed. It was part of the reason he had decided to skip out in the first place - he didn't fancy having first row seats to that performance.

Potter finally turned his head, squinting at Draco through his smudgy glasses.

"Because she's your - I mean, aren't you two…?"

"Aren't we what? I'm not responsible for her or her bad taste, she's free to do what she likes as long as I don't have to watch."

Potter's eyes widened and then he looked away quickly.

"Oh. Wow, okay then." He grimaced. "That's more than I ever wanted to know about your relationship."

Draco wasn't nearly as pissed as Potter, at least he thought he wasn't, but that had not made a lot of sense.

"Our… relationship?" he asked slowly.

Potter didn't elaborate, only made another sour expression like Draco had just asked him to drink something foul. Which was when the nerves in Draco's brain decided they were alright with cooperating after all and he felt the warm rush of blood climbing up his neck.

"It's not like _that_," he snapped, looking horrified at Potter. "What were you- did you honestly think- bloody hell, Potter, Pansy and I aren't together!"

There was a moment of hesitation from Potter. Then he straightened up, sagging not quite as low against the wall. He glanced suspiciously at Draco.

"You're not?" he asked.

Draco rolled his eyes and hoped it was dark enough that Potter couldn't see his blush.

"Merlin, no. Did you actually think we were?"

"Uh, yes?" Potter said, as if it was a perfectly reasonable thing to go around believing and Draco was the one being daft.

It was such an absurd idea. Sure, Potter didn't know either of them at all, and he was dense as a bridge troll, but how could he possibly be that far off?

"Potter," Draco said. "I'm gay."

He said it slowly, condescendingly, wanting Potter to understand how ridiculous his assumption was, but it sounded weird out loud. It always did. It had been a long time since he last had to tell anyone outright like that. Now that he thought about it, he might not actually have said it since he told his mum. A lot of people just assumed, and anyway it wasn't like Draco was dating, so it mostly didn't matter what people thought. Which was exactly why it was so absurd to be telling Potter, who he had in fact wanted to date since he was about 14, and who by all means should have known, considering they had been sworn enemies for years and Draco's homosexual tendencies ought to be the kind of thing a proper enemy would have sniffed out.

But Potter just stared at him, wide eyed and dumbfounded.

"Really?" he said, and Draco rolled his eyes again.

"Yes, _really_. Honestly, I don't know how you missed it, I thought Daphne made it her personal mission to tell everyone at Hogwarts the second she found out."

Potter let out a quiet groan that could have been a garbled swear and bent over, hands on his knees. So that probably wasn't good. Draco's gut twisted - Merlin, he did not feel like hearing Potter express his disapproval of his sexuality right now.

"What's wrong?" he asked, managing to sound fairly nonchalant. "Are you overcome with homophobic revulsion? Some manly Gryffindor urge to save me from my immoral ways?"

"Fuck you," Harry mumbled at his knees. "I'm just dizzy. I need to sit down."

He pushed off from the wall and took an uncertain step forward, losing his balance almost immediately. Draco surged forward and grabbed his arm, reacting on reflex rather than intent, and before he could extract himself from that blunder, Potter had grabbed onto him and was leaning heavily against him.

"Merlin, how drunk are you?" Draco muttered as he directed Potter to a doorway where he slumped over on the doorstep with his head between his knees.

Draco hesitated for a second before sitting down next to him. He listened to Potter's quiet breathing and kept his eyes fixed on the street ahead of them. He was sitting very close to him. Draco was still drunk enough that it required an active effort to fight the impulse to reach out and touch him, rub his back or something. Potter might be tolerating his presence, but it was unlikely he would stand for something like that. Draco considered lighting another cigarette. Potter groaned again.

"Are you dying?" Draco asked.

Potter shook his head.

"Should I get your friends?"

"No."

Draco glanced over at him. His head hung limply forward. His sweater was too big and kind of lumpy, managing to swallow the shape of his shoulders, even though Potter wasn't exactly scrawny anymore. Draco tried not to look at Potter's neck, that small stretch of smooth, brown skin exposed between Potter's hair and his collar. He tried not to think about what it might be like to touch him there, to run his fingers through his thick, black hair. It didn't go very well.

Potter straightened up and Draco started and quickly looked away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Potter lean back and rest his head against the door behind them. He had his eyes closed and Draco could see his Adam's apple move when he swallowed.

"I'm so drunk," he mumbled.

Draco hesitated.

"Should I go?" he asked.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to. The conversation certainly wasn't very stimulating, he wasn't sure what he was even supposed to do if Potter got sick, and if he was being perfectly honest, it was getting fairly awkward, even if Potter was too drunk to notice.

"No," Potter said, and Draco felt a treacherous twinge of gratitude in his gut. Because apparently he couldn't help being pathetically happy about being this close to Potter no matter the circumstances.

"You're wearing robes again," Potter said quietly.

"What?"

Potter opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Draco.

"You're wearing robes."

He was probably ruining his robes, actually, sitting like this on a filthy doorstep that had likely been soiled by countless unmentionable liquids over time.

"So?"

Potter shrugged.

"Liked your other clothes better."

"I don't."

Potter closed his eyes again.

"I think I should probably go home," he said.

Draco thought he should probably have gone home a while ago. He stood up. Potter looked up at him but didn't follow.

"Alright," Draco said. "Get up then, I'll help you find Granger."

Potter didn't move.

"She went home."

Draco grimaced.

"Weasley, then."

"Left," Potter said, but he grabbed Draco's outstretched hand anyway and Draco hoisted him to his feet, stumbling a little at the weight. And Potter swayed as he got to his feet, nearly crashing into him. Draco let go of Potter's hand as soon as he was upright, tried to back away, but Potter grabbed his arm again, clutching it tightly and Draco's heart threw itself into a fit.

"I think you can let go of me now," Draco said, trying to make his breathlessness sound like a laugh. "I trust you to stay vertical on your own."

But Potter didn't let go, he just leaned into Draco a little more, his face so close Draco could smell the beer on his breath. Potter was staring at him, brow furrowed, his eyes swimming and unfocused.

"Hey, Malfoy…" he slurred.

Draco could feel his heart like a heavy fist knocking against his ribs, his stomach a tightly wound knot.

Potter leaned in - for a second Draco thought he had just stumbled again. Then he realized that he hadn't, and it was too late to do anything about it. And Potter kissed him. Draco froze. Potter's fingers were tight around his arm, his lips were slow and soft. There was no air in Draco's lungs. His brain had died. He was having several heart attacks at once.

This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

Potter pulled away and slumped against him; the sudden weight almost made Draco's knees buckle. Potter leaned his head against Draco's shoulder, and Draco could feel his warm breath on his neck when he laughed.

"I can't believe you're gay," he muttered.

And then, before Draco had had a chance to remember how words worked, Potter had straightened up and pulled his wand out of his pocket. He was still holding on to Draco's arm.

"Alright," he said, and then the ground dropped away and air closed around them like a fist.

o

They tumbled onto the pavement in a poorly lit residential neighbourhood, and Draco barely remained standing as Potter crashed into him with his full weight.

"Merlin's saggy teats," Draco swore, gasping for air. "Are you absolutely mad, Potter? If you're too drunk to stand then you're too drunk to apparate! You could have _killed _us, could have splinched us completely!"

Draco took a deep breath. It felt like his heart was trying to climb out his throat.

"Shit," he muttered. "I'm still not entirely sure you didn't leave half my guts behind."

Potter might have tried to say something then, but before he could get any words out, his grip on Draco's arm tightened as he doubled over and retched, emptying is stomach on the pavement.

Draco looked away. Well then.

"Sorry," Potter mumbled when he was done.

Draco sighed.

"Where did you even take us?" he asked, casting his eyes around, mostly to make sure no one was around to witness the scene.

Thankfully, the street was deserted except for the two of them. Only about every other street lamp was lit, the sickly yellow circles beneath them seeming to serve more to highlight the darkness than to actually brighten the street. The houses were big but decrepit, looming hollow-eyed behind Georgian terraces and ornate iron railings. It looked like it might have been a wealthy neighbourhood once, but now the air had a distinct smell of piss and there were overflowing rubbish bins by nearly every front yard.

"Grimmauld Place," Potter said. " 's where I live. Number 12."

Potter pointed to one of the houses.

"Right," Draco said.

Draco knew he had been to the Black family residence as a child, but it was a very long time ago, and none of it looked familiar.

"Can you make it inside on your own?"

"Yes," Potter said.

Draco let go of his arm and Potter made it about two wobbly steps before he tripped over the curb and Draco grabbed him again.

"Guess I'm walking you to the door, then."

He put an arm around Potter's waist and they walked to the front door. And Draco's _hand_ was on Potter's _waist_, and he could feel him breathing, could feel his hair tickling his neck when Potter leaned against him and he felt like the worst, most disgusting creep to ever be born. Sure, Potter had kissed him, but that had just been… well, Potter was too drunk to _walk_, so it obviously didn't count, and Draco's brain absolutely shouldn't be short circuiting over the fact that he was touching him.

They made their way up the stairs and Potter released his death grip on Draco to slump against the door instead. Draco looked away and took a deep breath to steady himself.

"Fuck," Potter muttered, dropping his keys.

Draco picked them up before Potter could hurt himself by attempting such a risky manoeuvre on his own.

"Fuck," Potter breathed again as he accepted the keys from Draco.

His eyes settled on Draco maybe for the first time since they apparated, and there was a flicker of grim awareness on his face.

"I can't believe I… Sorry. For making you do this."

Draco wasn't sure if Potter had actually made him do anything.

"It's fine," he said. "You're just drunk, we've all been there."

Potter huffed out a laugh.

"Try telling Hermione that."

And Draco didn't get to ask what that was supposed to mean, because the key finally slotted into place and Potter pushed the door open. He stumbled inside and after a moment of hesitation, Draco followed. Potter was steadying himself with a hand against the wall. He looked like there was some risk of him throwing up again.

"You alright?" Draco asked.

Potter grimaced.

"Not really."

He straightened up and looked towards the staircase at the end of the hallway with the expression of a man facing Azkaban.

"I should probably go," Draco said.

"Yeah," Potter said, but he didn't move and Draco didn't either.

And then Potter turned from the stairs and reached for him again, touching Draco's shoulder lightly.

"I really like your muggle clothes better," he said.

Draco swallowed. His heart was flinging itself madly against his ribs.

"I'll wear them next time, then," he said, as evenly as he could.

Potter smiled, and Draco could feel his heartbeat all the way to the tips of his fingers. And then Potter moved his hand from Draco's shoulder to his neck, fingertips resting lightly against his skin, surely able to feel his pulse hammering out the rhythm of Draco's panic as Potter halfway leaned halfway stumbled into another kiss. It was clumsy, just a brief press of soft lips, a second where Draco could smell Potter's awful breath when he pulled away, the pressure of Potter's hand on his shoulder as he braced against him for balance. Draco's mind didn't even have time to catch up before it was over. Potter's eyes were half-closed, he seemed to be looking down at where his hand was resting on Draco's arm as if he too was confused about what it was doing there.

"D'you want to stay?" he muttered.

He still wasn't looking at Draco's face when he said it. His thumb was stroking the fabric of Draco's sleeve. Draco just stared at him. At this drunk boy, who was definitely Harry Potter, who looked like he would pass out the second he was horizontal, who still for some reason had decided to stay standing, who had just kissed him, again, and was still touching him, as if that was allowed.

"What?" he managed.

His voice came out an off-pitch croak. Potter's eyes snapped back to Draco's face. He dropped his hand.

"Sorry," he said. "'M drunk."

Draco took a step back.

"Yes."

The corners of Potter's mouth twitched.

"Sorry," he said again.

Draco reached for the door.

"It's fine. I'll just… I'll just go now."

He nodded at Harry, once, resolutely, and then he turned heel and stalked out of there as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run.

He was outside and halfway down the street when his brain finally caught up with him.

"What the fuck," he muttered. "What the actual fuck."

He kept walking. He should figure out where the nearest apparition point was.

It was probably the one back by the Black residence. By _Potter's_ house. There was no way he was turning around to go back there, so he just kept walking. He felt drained, exhausted. The cold had seeped into his bones and he just wanted to curl up in his bed and sleep forever. He was pretty sure he was sober by now. That didn't make any of it feel more real.

He felt like shit. Potter had kissed him, and he felt like _utter shit_ because of it.

And the worst part, the absolute worst of it, was that the whole thing was like some twisted take on fifteen-year-old Draco's fantasies. He was pretty sure he had dreamt up this exact scenario at one point or another - running into Potter at a pub, Potter realizing he wanted him, kissing him, taking him home. Et cetera. Which just made it all worse, made it so much more humiliating.

Of course, when he had daydreamed about it, he hadn't imagined Potter too wasted to walk or unlock the door to his own house. Hadn't added the detail of Potter throwing up in the gutter either.

He may have been feeling severely confounded right then, but he wasn't stupid enough to think this _meant_ something. Potter hadn't actually wanted to kiss him. Because Potter still hated him. And Potter wasn't gay. Draco knew that. He knew _him_. He had been watching him to a downright creepy extent during their Hogwarts years, and he _knew_.

Potter had just been drunk out of his mind and willing to kiss anything with a pulse, and Draco had been stupid enough to tell him he was gay, and somehow that had made him an acceptable target.

A couple of drunk muggles passed Draco on the opposite side of the street. He hunched up his shoulders and walked a little faster.


	7. Chapter 6

Harry woke up feeling like shit. His room was dark, but there was a sliver of grey daylight coming through the heavy curtains, falling across his bed. He had fallen asleep with his glasses on. They were greasy and halfway askew; he could feel where the frame had been cutting into his cheek.

Harry turned to reach for the clock on his desk and winced. His head hurt. A nauseating tightness behind the eyes, an insistent pounding in his temples. Everything hurt. His mouth tasted like something had died in there.

The air in the room was thick and stale. He really needed to open a window, let some air in. He wasn't sure he could move without throwing up.

He could actually smell himself. The sour scent of sweat and beer clung to his clothes and his sheets and felt like a grimy film on his skin.

He closed his eyes for a second. Alright. He had been here before. He could do this. Slowly, he pushed himself upright and swung his feet onto the floor. He swallowed hard, waited for the pounding in his head to subside. Then he pulled the drawer in his bedside table open. He should really clean it out, it was full of all sorts of detritus he had no idea where had even come from - there were a couple of official-looking letters, broken quills and dried out ink-wells, a pair of socks for some reason, and in between all the mess, a handful of phials, each about the size of his finger. All of them unsealed and empty with only a hint of purple residue left clinging to the inside of the glass. Harry swore under his breath. He fumbled around in there for a second before he gave up and pulled the whole drawer out, dumping its contents on the floor. There was a heavy clonk as the ceremonial silver pocket watch from the Ministry hit the floor. The empty phials clattered out as well, and a single, still-full one rolled over the floor. Harry snatched it up before it could disappear under the bed. He peeled off the seal and emptied the potion into his mouth, swallowed and then leaned forward on his knees and waited. There was a pleasant, burning sensation in his throat. It tingled along the back of his neck, over his scalp. Slowly, the fog over his mind lifted. His headache settled down. His nausea melted away. His stomach growled. He hadn't even noticed how hungry he was. And thirsty too. Hangover potions didn't fix the dehydration. His neck still ached from how he'd been sleeping on it funny, but there wasn't much he could do about that. He got up, pulled some fairly clean-looking clothes from the pile on the floor and headed for the bathroom.

o

Ron found him in the kitchen, where he was making bacon and eggs.

"You're still alive, then?" he said.

"I'm alright. Starving, though."

"I made coffee earlier, think there's still some left, if you want it."

"Sure," Harry said.

Ron pulled out mugs for both of them while Harry scraped eggs onto his plate. Ron cleared his throat.

"You know," he said, "I thought you were going to crash at Seamus and Dean’s place."

"Why would I do that?" Harry said, taking his plate and mug to the table.

Ron shrugged and followed him with his own mug.

"Because everyone was too drunk to apparate and they live right around the corner."

Harry frowned. Right. He had forgotten about that. He hadn't been to their place in a while.

"We got an owl from them this morning," Ron continued, while Harry piled eggs and bacon onto his toast.

"They asked if you'd come home, said you'd just disappeared last night. And of course, Hermione got really worried. She felt bad that we left you there."

Harry rolled his eyes.

"When doesn't she worry?" he grumbled.

"I was worried too," Ron said sharply.

Harry winced. He looked up from his breakfast and met Ron's grim expression.

"Sorry?" he said, and then: "I don't know what you want me to say. I was in my room."

"I know. We checked so…" Ron shrugged. "Guess I'm just wondering why you didn't go with them."

Harry made a noncommittal noise and shovelled some more bacon into his mouth. He kind of wished he had gotten to eat his breakfast before Ron decided to interrogate him. He felt fine now, but truth was there was a lot he couldn't actually remember from last night. He wasn't sure when Ron and Hermione had even left. He remembered them being there and then not being there anymore. He remembered Neville leaving and how he had started zoning out from the conversation because he had never really gotten close with the non-Gryffindor DA members the way Dean and Seamus had. Even after all this time, there still seemed to be in-jokes he wasn't getting.

"I didn't want to bother them," he muttered, since it seemed like Ron wanted some kind of answer, and that was as good as any.

"They were the ones who offered, when you wanted to stay longer."

He definitely didn't remember that.

"Yeah, well…"

He took a sip of his coffee. It was only lukewarm but at least it wasn't as bitter as when Hermione made it.

Padma and Hannah might have left at some point. And then there had been a lot of people Harry didn't know, they might have been Terry's friends. One of them had asked for his autograph. Was that when he had decided to leave?

No, the guy had asked him who he was staring at.

Because he had been keeping an eye on the Slytherins. Malfoy had left them, it had only been Zabini, Greengrass and Parkinson at the table. Terry's friend had asked if Harry was interested in her, and laughed, telling him it looked like that ship had sailed. Because Parkinson was snogging some bloke and that was when Harry had gone outside to… Harry nearly choked on his coffee.

"Are you okay?" Ron said, sounding alarmed.

That was when he had gone outside to talk to Malfoy.

"I'm fine."

That was when he had gone outside to talk to Malfoy, who was apparently _not_ bothered by Parkinson hooking up with other blokes, because he was _gay_.

And Harry had kissed him.

He had, hadn't he?

Harry stared down at his still half full plate, but his stomach had twisted into tight knots and he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to eat any more of it if he tried.

"Harry, mate, what's going on? You're freaking me out a bit here."

"I said I'm fine."

Harry pushed back his chair and picked up his plate.

"I need to call someone," he said.

He dumped the rest of his breakfast into the bin.

"Can it wait five minutes? I know you're not feeling great right now, but Hermione wanted me to ask you if you apparated home last night, because-"

"Why can't she ask me herself?" Harry snarled.

"She's at work."

"It's Saturday."

"Something came up, but look-"

Harry rolled his eyes.

"Of course it did."

"What does it matter?" Ron snapped. "She's not the only one who's worried, you know, and I think we need to talk about-"

"I'm not going to apologize for getting drunk at a pub," Harry said, dropping his plate and silverware loudly in the sink. "That's what they're for."

"No one is saying that, but you shouldn't apparate home at fuck knows what hour of the night if you've been drinking since nine!"

"I'm fine, Ron! Yeah, I'm a bit hungover, but I'm perfectly unsplinched. Still got all my limbs attached,” he said, waving his hand in Ron’s direction to show him his intact fingers. “All my organs in the right place. I've survived worse things than a night of drinking."

"Can you take this seriously for one second?"

"No," Harry said.

He stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Ron didn't follow. He still had to fight not to break into a run.

Harry slammed the living room door behind him and rushed over to the couch, pulled out the phone and then stopped, staring at it. He didn't know Malfoy's number. For a second he just stood there, feeling like an idiot. Then he remembered that he was a wizard, and this was stupid, and he _had _gotten used to a life without phones a long time ago. He looked around for a quill and something to write on. He scribbled _call me_ on a scrap of paper with some of Hermione's crossed out notes on it, signed it and folded it up.

Hermione's Ministry issued barn owl was asleep in her cage by the window. Harry poked her gently through the bars. She opened her inky black eyes and blinked at him, looking a little peeved to be woken up.

"Sorry," he said to her. "But I need you to take this to Draco Malfoy."

The owl stuck out her leg.

o

Harry paced the living room as he wondered how long it would take the owl to make it to Malfoy's place.

He wondered how long it would be before Ron came looking for him. He was probably waiting for Harry to calm down. Or for Hermione to come home. He hated when they ganged up on him. He hated when they ganged up on him because they were worried. It made him feel like such a shit. He just didn't want to talk to them about it was all. He knew he was being stupid, them telling him he was being stupid just made it worse.

He definitely didn't want to tell them about last night.

The phone rang. Harry's heart jumped. He rushed over, managed to hit his shin on the coffee table and swore under his breath as he dropped onto the couch and scrambled to pick up the receiver.

"Malfoy?" he said, only a little out of breath.

He rubbed the sore spot on his leg.

"Yes. Hello, Potter," said Malfoy. "Fancy hearing from you today."

"Did you tell anyone?"

There was a breathy sound from Malfoy's end, either a laugh or a sigh.

"Tell them what?" Malfoy asked.

"About yesterday."

“Which part? The one where you drunk-apparated me halfway across London without my consent? Or the bit where you nearly threw up on my dragon-leather shoes?"

Harry's jaw tightened.

"You know which part."

"Oh, you mean did I tell anyone how you were so plastered you decided to snog me in front of the most popular pub in Diagon Alley?"

"Did you?"

"No."

"I don't believe you."

"Well, that's your problem, not mine."

"Malfoy, I swear, if you-"

Malfoy cut him off: "I'm not going to tell. I'm sure yesterday must have been an exceptional low-point in your life, but I can assure you, it wasn't exactly one of my proudest moments either. I don't have any interest in this getting out. If we're lucky, nobody saw us, and your little deviation from the narrow path of heterosexuality will remain a secret, alright?"

Harry froze. He hadn't even considered that.

"You think someone might have seen?"  
"I don't know, Potter. I wasn't exactly sober either."

"Fuck," Harry breathed.

This time, it was definitely a sigh from Malfoy.

"If anyone saw, they'll probably assume they were hallucinating."

He sounded almost sympathetic. Harry pulled his knees up to his chest, pressing the receiver close to his ear. No one was going to think that. Especially if people knew that Malfoy was… The details of last night's conversation were pretty hazy, but Malfoy had seemed to think people knew. He had assumed Harry knew. Harry's head was starting to hurt again.

"I just… fuck. Why were you even there?"

"It was Blaise's birthday," Malfoy said coolly. "My friends wanted to go out for drinks. I wasn't actually there to ruin your night. Also, may I remind you that you were the one who started talking to me?"

Harry groaned.

"Did you want anything else, Potter?"

"No."

Malfoy wouldn't tell. That was all he had wanted to know. He didn't feel any better.

"Goodbye."

"I'm not gay," Harry said quickly, quietly.

There was a beat of silence from Malfoy's end.

"I know, Potter," he said. "Everyone knows. I also couldn't care less."

Harry took a deep breath. He should hang up.

"I don't know why I did it," he said instead.

"You were drunk."

"Yeah."

He didn't know why Malfoy wasn't hanging up either.

"I'm going to pretend it never happened, Potter. I suggest you do the same. In a week you’ll be over whatever meltdown it is you're having right now and you'll probably tell all your friends anyway, and you can all have a good laugh about it."

A door slammed somewhere outside the living room and Harry started.

"I'm home!" sounded Hermione's muffled voice.

"Shit," Harry breathed.

"What now?"

"Hermione just came home."

"Well then. It was nice talking to you, Potter."

"No!" Harry blurted out before he could stop himself.

He winced. He could hear Ron's voice in the hallway too. There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"Sorry," he said. "I just… what are you doing right now?"

"Talking to you, apparently."

"I meant do you have any plans?"

More silence. He couldn't make out what Ron and Hermione were saying. His stomach was inventing entirely new knots to tie itself into. His heart was beating very fast.

"I'm meeting some friends for chips and a pint in half an hour."

"You're going drinking_ now_? Wait - what time is it?"

"Quarter past five."

Harry glanced out the window. It was pretty dark, actually. He hadn't noticed.

"Huh. I just woke up."

Malfoy sighed.

"Hungover?"

"No. I took a hangover potion."

There was a moment of silence. Harry listened for Ron and Hermione's voices. He couldn't hear them anymore.

"If…" Malfoy began, but then cut himself off.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What were you going to say?"

"Just… well. Do you want to come along?"

"To- when you go out?"

"I thought that was why you asked."

"Right. I guess. But if you're meeting your friends that's probably not a good idea."

"They're my muggle friends. From work."

"You have muggle friends?"

"Yes, Potter. I do."

Harry hesitated.

"When did you say you were meeting them?"

"Half an hour."

"Alright, then."

"Alright, what?"

Harry took a deep breath.

"I'll come."

o

The hallway was thankfully empty when he got there. He tried to be quiet, but they must have heard him anyway. He had only just stepped into his shoes when Hermione showed up. Ron didn't. Maybe that was what they had discussed while he was on the phone, the best _strategy_ for talking to him.

"Hi, Harry," she said, a little too brightly. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he said, reaching for his coat.

"Ron said you've been asleep until now…?"

"I was tired. Anyway, I'm heading out. I'll talk to you later, alright? "

He still wasn't looking at her. He kept his eyes on his hands as he buttoned up his coat, but he could feel her looking at him, could feel the disapproving frown like a tremor in the air between them.

"You're going out now?"

"Just meeting some people," he said, stepping around her to the front door and pulling it open. "See you later."

"But, I - okay. See you-"

He closed the door behind him.

Harry strode briskly across the front yard of Grimmauld Place and into the street. He had forgotten to grab his scarf and the air was cold around his neck. He was being stupid, he knew that. He just didn't care very much right then. In the time since he had quit the aurors, memories of Sirius popped into Harry's mind more and more often. How everyone had been telling him to stay inside, stay hidden, not to be stupid. Grimmauld Place wasn't the same oppressive, musty monument to old pureblood traditions that it had been back when the Order used it, and besides, Harry was free to leave the house whenever he wanted, but there were days he spent pacing the old hallways, feeling like he was going crazy with doing nothing, where he couldn't help but think that this must have been how Sirius had felt in the last months he was alive. The house was huge, but it still made him feel trapped. And sometimes, like today, that feeling only got worse because Ron and Hermione were in there with him, with their concern and all the subjects they carefully avoided right until they didn't.

He reached the apparition point in front of the house. He had asked Hermione about them. Apparently he had been apparating illegally all over London for the past year and no one had bothered to tell him. Harry checked that the street was empty, then pulled out his wand.

o

The pub was a small, unassuming place, but nicer than the one he had met Draco at last time. There was football playing on screens behind the bar, a couple of men watching it intently and quiet chatter around the room. Harry looked around for Malfoy's blonde hair and spotted him in a corner where two tables had been pushed together and a group of young people were squashed closely around them. Malfoy had his back to the door, but Harry had spent so much time following Draco around Hogwarts, he could pick the back of his head out of a line up. Harry headed towards them and the girl across from Draco seemed to notice. She perked up in her seat and said something to Draco, who turned around.

"You actually came," he said when Harry reached them.

"I said I would."

There were eight of them at the table, sitting nearly shoulder to shoulder. Harry hesitated.

"Should we pull up another table or something?"

"No, we can squeeze you in. Go grab a chair," said the girl Draco had been talking to.

He wouldn't have believed it was possible to add another chair to the table without using some kind of space-warping magic, but by the time he came back, there was a narrow opening between Malfoy and the stringy, white boy to his left. Harry sat down between them, trying and failing to keep a reasonable distance between them. His shoulder would brush against Malfoy's, but when he tried to lean away he found himself leaning into the boy on his other side.

"You're Harry then?" said the girl across from them, the one who had spotted him when he came in.

She had warm brown skin and a shrewd look in her eyes. Her long hair was gathered in twisty braids, that maybe weren't actually braids. They looked complicated.

"Yeah. Did uh…" Harry's shoulder brushed Malfoy's again and he opted for leaning forwards, resting his elbows on the table. "Did Malfoy tell you about me?"

"Just told them you were coming," Malfoy said.

His voice still felt very close, and now Harry had to twist awkwardly to even look at him.

"Draco says you went to school together," said the girl, looking curiously at Harry. "I kind of expected you to be another posh white boy."

"Er, what?"

"Boarding school, right? Isn't it all rich white kids there?"

"It's uh… I suppose they were mostly white," Harry floundered, "but they weren't… Most of them weren't like… Draco."

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry thought he saw Malfoy flinch.

"Really? He doesn't talk much about his friends but the ones we've heard of all have super pretentious names."

"Who names their kid Gregory?" said the boy on Harry's left.

"Or Pansy?" added someone else.

"Oh, shut up," Draco snapped. "Anyway, Potter, these are my colleagues, who I am sure would eventually introduce themselves if we waited long enough, but how about we just get it over with now?"

He nodded at the girl across from them.

"This is Irie, she would have been in my house and she will try to pry information out of you. Please do not let her. Next to you is Ethan, over there is Maya, who only started working with us - what, last week?"

The short haired, Indian girl next to Irie hid her face in her hands.

"Has it really only been a week?" she muttered tragically.

Irie put a sympathetic arm around her.

"Then there's Nate, he's the chubby one there at the end," Malfoy said, nodding towards a pasty, brown haired boy who was deep in conversation with the blonde girl next to him and was paying them no attention.

Harry started losing track of the names by then, and the rest of the people were doomed to remain identity-less faces in his memory.

"So, Harry, are you going to get yourself a pint or are you just here to watch?" asked Irie when Draco had finished his introductions.

"Or a coke, if you don't drink," Maya added.

"He drinks," Malfoy said.

Harry cringed. For a second he had almost forgotten why he was there in the first place. It suddenly didn't seem like such a smart decision to go hang out with Malfoy because he hadn't wanted to deal with Ron and Hermione's concern about his pathetic drunken self when Malfoy was the one who had witnessed said patheticness.

"I'm working up to it."

"He's hungover," Malfoy added helpfully.

"Only one way to get over that, mate," said one of the boys. "First beer is the hardest. Then you've scaled the wall and it's all downhill from there."

Harry nodded. He pushed back his chair and squeezed his way out, opting for jostling the stranger next to him rather than squashing himself against Malfoy.

"Be right back," he said.

He got a beer. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared. The hangover potion had done its work, and he'd at least gotten in a decent amount of sleep before he decided to put himself in a bar again.

Harry hadn't really had time to build up his expectations for Malfoy's muggle friends, but he realized as he looked around at them that he had assumed they would simply be a muggle equivalent of his gang at Hogwarts. He was quite happy to have been wrong about that. They were all surprisingly normal and… not unpleasant. There were a lot of them too, which meant he didn't have to talk much. He drank his beer quietly, listened to the conversation flowing around him and tried not to dwell on what the fuck he was doing there.

After a while, Nate asked who was up for another round. Malfoy glanced at Harry and he shrugged.

It got easier after the second beer.

"So, Harry, what do you do?" asked Maya, when Harry had apparently been quiet for too long and some participation was required if he wanted this to not be weird. Or maybe she was just being nice, he reminded himself.

"I'm not really doing anything right now. Looking for a job, I guess. I was in the aur- in the police for a while."

Maya raised her eyebrows.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Hm. You don't strike me as the type."

"Uh… I don't?" Harry asked.

Next to him, Malfoy snorted.

"No?" he said, as if that was obvious.

Harry stared at him.

"Why not?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes.

"Honestly, Potter, the fact that _anybody_ thought you would be able to do a job that requires you to take orders is beyond me. You have a serious problem with authority - I mean, there were times where it seemed as if just the fact that someone was an adult in a position of power was enough to make you disregard everything they said. Also, can you imagine yourself being responsible for upholding all the old wiz- the old laws? Was there a single rule in school you _didn't_ break?"

"Okay, I had extremely good reasons for-"

"Sneaking into Hogsmeade on weekends to go shopping? Breaking curfew literally every school year?"

Malfoy twisted in his chair, leaning an elbow on the table so he was facing Harry full-on.

"Also, the aurors work in teams with assigned partners. _You_ picked out your two best friends on the first day of school when you were _eleven _and then kept everyone else at arm’s distance for the next seven years. Can you honestly say you would be able to properly trust someone you didn't even _know_? Besides, the aurors are a Ministry organization, and I know your lot think you've taken over the whole thing by now, but it _is_ still the Ministry, you know. Old money politics, very conservative, very set in its ways. I'm surprised you managed to stick around as long as you did."

Harry gaped at him.

Everyone had always told him the aurors was the right thing for him to do. Or, well, maybe they hadn't _told_ him outright, but _he _had thought it was the right thing to do, and no one had said otherwise. And now he was listening to Malfoy list every single reason he had eventually had to leave as if it had all been obvious from the start, laying it all out in that arrogant drawl that awakened Harry's still present reflex to protest everything the idiot said. But before he could get his thoughts in order to tell Malfoy how wrong he was, even if he technically wasn't, the boy at the end of the table leaned forward and asked:

"What's an auror?"

Harry stared at him. The boy was ginger and freckled enough to pass for a Weasley. His name might have been John or Josh. Malfoy was staring at him like a deer caught in headlights.

"Uh…" he said.

"Means copper," Harry said quickly. "It's uh… slang. Public school slang."

"Yes, exactly," Malfoy said. "Scottish thing, actually. Something we say up North. Where our school was. Is."

Irie was looking at Malfoy like she was watching someone have an aneurism. Malfoy's face was twitching a bit. He looked like he was contemplating the legal consequences of singlehandedly bringing down the Statute of Secrecy.

"Anyway," Harry said quickly, "what do you guys do?"

And Maya, like the gracious and lovely person she was, answered like this was still a perfectly normal conversation and not an awkward train wreck of nonsense.

"Well, me and Irie are at uni, and I think Nate is too? And Hannah is doing some trade school thing. Most of us are only part time at Starbucks, I think Draco and Chris are the only full-timers, right?" Maya said.

Harry didn't get to hear the answer to whether or not Draco and Chris were the only full-timers. He was too busy choking on his beer. Someone thumped him on the back as he coughed, trying to get air into his lungs.

"You okay?" asked Irie.

Harry heaved in a long, thin breath and nodded. He wiped his mouth and looked from Irie to Maya to Malfoy.

"It's a Starbucks," he said. "You work at Starbucks?"

"Yes," said Malfoy calmly, as if he hadn't noticed Harry's near-death experience at all.

He wasn't looking at Harry though. He had his eyes trained on his beer as he picked at the label, meticulously peeling it off.

"Why didn't I know that?" Harry demanded.

"Well, you didn't ask," said Malfoy primly, and it was kind of dim in the pub, but Harry thought he could see a pink blush creeping up his neck.

"Does your mum know?"

"No, of course not!" he snapped.

"You're keeping us secret, Draco?" Irie said. "I'm hurt! Are you that ashamed of having a normal job?"

"My mother and I aren't currently on speaking terms, actually."

Irie pulled a face.

"Okay, sorry. Way to turn this whole thing into a bummer," she said. "We were just having fun."

"I can't believe you work at Starbucks," Harry said.

"Watch yourself, Harry," said Maya with a smirk. "You don't sound as posh as Draco, but your shock is starting to get a little offensive, don't you think?"

"Oh, hey, there's Mark," said Irie suddenly, half rising from her chair as far as the table allowed, and waving at someone behind them.

Harry turned around in his seat to see another person approaching their table. He was a white boy with soft, brown curls and bright, smiling eyes.

"Glad you made it!" Irie said. "I can't really get out right now, but I'll hug you later, alright?"

"Yeah, sorry I came so late," he said. "Hey, Maya."

"So this is Draco," Irie said, and Draco twisted around in his seat to shake hands with the boy.

"Nice to meet you," he said.  
"Draco, you remember I've told you about Mark, right?" Irie said.

"Yes," Draco said, and there was a flicker of understanding on his face. "You didn't say he'd be coming by tonight."

Mark didn't work at Starbucks. He was one of Maya and Irie's friends, but apparently didn't need to be introduced to anyone but Draco. Irie asked maybe-Josh to move over, but he said he needed to be getting home anyway, so Mark took over his chair instead. He barely had time to sit down before Irie sent him and Draco to get more beer.

"I can get them myself," Mark said, already standing up.

"Well, you can't carry all of them back," Irie said.

"They've got trays," Draco muttered.

"Just go!"

As soon as they left, Maya covered her face with her hands and her shoulders were shaking with laughter.

"Oh my God, Irie!" she said through her giggles. "That was _not_ subtle!"

"What?" Irie said looking at her with her eyebrows raised in what was, even to Harry, a very unconvincing mask of innocence.

"You could have warned Draco at least if you were going to set him up!"

"No I couldn't! Draco is shy, he probably wouldn't have come if I'd told him."

"Did Mark know of this cunning plan?"

"It's for his own good! You know he needs to get over Adrian. And Draco is kind of his type, right?"

Maya peeked out from her hands.

"Is he?"

"He totally is! Nice face, smart, too awkward for this cruel Earth."

Maya laughed even harder.

"You're terrible," she said.

Harry looked from one to the other. He suddenly had to fight very hard not to turn around in his seat to get another look at Mark.

"Mark is uh… Mark is gay, then?" he said.

The girls turned to him, as if they had momentarily forgotten he was there. Maya's laughter dried up.

"Yeah," Irie said. She put her arm around Maya like she had done earlier, only there was something very meaningful to the gesture now. "That a problem?"

Harry wondered why Draco thought Irie would have been in Slytherin. Everything about the way she was looking at him right then screamed of Gryffindor. Harry shook his head quickly.

"No," he said. "No, not at all."

And then, because Malfoy apparently wasn't the only one who was too awkward for this world, he added: "My ex-girlfriend is gay too," like an absolute pillock.

Maya started laughing again, and the corners of Irie's mouth twitched, which kind of undermined the menacing stare she had been giving him.

"Good for her," she said.

Harry tried to calculate the odds of how likely he would be to get away with it if he just straight up apparated out of there.

"Uh, yeah, it's… yeah. I mean we're still friends," he added. "So I don't… I don't mind. Is all. That's what I meant."

Irie smirked.

"Alright, I believe you," she said.

He glanced over his shoulder towards the bar. It was getting crowded up there, there were a lot more people in the pub now. It might take a while for Mark and Draco to get back, and Harry felt strangely untethered without Draco there.

"I'm still kind of shocked Draco has normal friends," Irie said, dragging his attention back to the table.

"He's friends with you," Harry said. "You all seem normal enough."

Irie shrugged.

"I mean he goes out for drinks with us, but I don't actually know him that well. Don't get me wrong, I like him. He's funny. He's just a little… odd, you know?"

Harry hesitated.

"I guess?" he said.

He had thought a lot of uncharitable things about Malfoy over the years, but never that he was odd. Cruel, yes; petty, cowardly and pathetic, absolutely, but never odd. It was a word he would have used about someone like Luna Lovegood, who was kind and lovely but did always seem as if she had just come from another world.

And then, as soon as that thought manifested itself, it made sense, of course. That Draco would be odd in this world which he had, in fact, just dropped into.

"But you two seem close?" Irie said.

Harry tried not to look shocked.

"We've uh… known each other a long time," he said.

"Yeah, I suppose living with someone all the time you're in school forces you to get to know each other."

"Did you sleep in dormitories or did you have your own rooms?" asked Maya.

"Dormitories. Me and Malfoy were in different ones, though. We were in different houses."

Irie rolled her eyes.

"Public schools," she muttered.

Maya grinned.

"Did they have silly names?"

"Gryffindor and Slytherin."

They both laughed. It was weird. Harry had grown up muggle too, but he couldn't remember ever finding the names of the houses funny. He supposed he had been too preoccupied with the wands and the ghosts and the magical portals to hidden train stations, he hadn't had time to consider that the _names_ of things were odd. And then - it was weird to think that they didn't _know_. That those names meant nothing to them, that the fact that Harry and Malfoy were in Gryffindor and Slytherin gave them no clue that it was very unlikely they had been friends. That they had no idea what Hogwarts was, what it _meant_. Neither the good nor the bad. And Harry liked them, he liked them a lot - Irie even reminded him a bit of Ginny - but suddenly he felt a thousand miles away from them. Even the pleasant fogginess the beer had left in his brain, which usually made him feel less distant, didn't help much. It was like her laugh had put an ocean between them, between him and everyone else at the table. It was a lonely feeling. It made him wish Malfoy hadn't left. Even if everything was strange and awkward and awful between them, at least Malfoy_ knew_.

"You're sure your name is Harry," Irie asked with a grin. "You're not secretly called some posh name like… I don't know, Harrington or something?"

Harry smiled back across the ocean.

"No," he said. "Just Harry."

Maya raised her glass.

"Alright, just-Harry," she said. "Cheers to that."

Draco and Mark finally came back and Harry felt his shoulders drop in relief. He accepted his beer gratefully.

He wondered what Ron and Hermione were doing. It was getting late. He should probably have told them where he was going. He had been such an arse. He took a long swig of his beer and tried to push the thought from his mind. He wished they were drinking something harder. He had managed to get out of Grimmauld Place alright. He could do with getting out of his head too.

Irie had gone to the bathroom and Maya was talking to the people at the other end of the table and Draco had mostly turned away from him and was deep in conversation with Mark. Harry pushed his chair back and stood up.

"Going to the loo," he muttered to no one in particular.

When he came back, Draco and Mark were gone and Harry felt his stomach drop inexplicably. The rest of the group were still at the table, louder now, and Harry considered leaving then. But his coat was still on the back of his chair, he would have to go and get it, and then he would have to make up some kind of excuse for why he was leaving that wasn't just "Malfoy isn't here anymore."

It was only the second after he had sat back down he realized that that would have been a perfectly valid excuse to give. They all thought he and Malfoy were friends.

"Where's Malfoy?" he asked.

Irie looked at him. Maya remained in animated conversation with the other half of the table.

"What?"

"Did Mal- did Draco leave?"

"Him and Mark just stepped out for a smoke." She frowned at him. "You alright?"

Harry nodded.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

So they would be back soon. That should have made him feel better. It didn't. It would be nice to have Malfoy back, to have just one person in the room he actually knew. But he didn't like Mark. He was nice enough, he just seemed a bit… clingy. He had just met Malfoy, so why was he hanging all over him? Shouldn't he talk to his friends too, instead of leaving that to Harry?

"Oh, that's right!" said Irie suddenly, and Harry jumped a little.

She leaned conspiratorially across the table and lowered her voice. Her eyes were bright and shining.

"I wanted to ask you about something," she said.

"Okay?"

"And if it's like… something personal or something, you don't have to tell me, but I'm going to die if I don't ask, alright?"

Harry shrugged.

"Okay."

"Okay. So this weird thing happened at work a little while back. Draco was handing this girl her coffee and she starts screaming at him, right? Just completely out of nowhere. Calling him a murderer and all sorts of crazy shit. And, okay, this might sound a bit mad, but it seemed like it was because of his tattoo?"

"His… tattoo?" Harry said slowly.

His palms were starting to get sweaty. He glanced towards the door. How long could it take to smoke a cigarette?

"Yeah, he's got this big tattoo down his forearm, like," Irie said, extending her own arm to point out the spot. "Snake and a skull? It's pretty cool."

Harry could feel his heart in his throat.

"Oh, that one," he said.

"You've seen it?" she asked.

He just nodded. Remembered red blood swirling over a waterlogged bathroom floor. He took another swig of his beer.  
"Alright, so I think maybe that girl saw it? I think he had his sleeves pushed up when he handed her the cup, and then sort of pulled it back down when she was yelling. Oh, and she pointed a _stick_ at him, isn't that weird?"

"Yeah," Harry said. His mouth was too dry. "Really weird."

"Do you have any idea what that was about? Does the tattoo like… mean something or…?"

Harry shook his head.

"No," he said, maybe too quickly.

Irie frowned at him.

"I mean… It's nothing. It's just something he got when we were 16."

"Any idea what that girl was on about?"

"I need to go the bathroom," he said.

"Didn't you just go?" she asked, but Harry was already standing up.

"Alcohol," he said. "Runs right through."

o

He slammed the stall door closed behind him and slumped against it. He heaved a deep breath. His heart was still racing and his head was spinning, though he wasn't sure if that was from the beer or the conversation.

What the hell had Malfoy been doing, going around showing off the mark?

And someone had seen it. Someone had recognized it.

"Fuck," Harry muttered.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to breathe normally. He remembered his visit to Malfoy's flat, when Malfoy had told him he didn't go into Wizard London anymore. And how he had assumed Seamus wanted to beat him up when they met in Diagon Alley. That had been yesterday. It seemed so long ago already.

A toilet flushed in the stall next to him and he started.

He needed to go home.

o

Back at the table, Malfoy and Mark were still missing. Harry took his jacket from where he had hung it on the back of his chair. Irie looked up at him.

"You're leaving?"

"Yeah, sorry."

"Did I say something? I'm sorry if I shouldn't have asked about-"

Harry shook his head and forced a smile.

"No, it's fine," he said. "Don't worry about it. Just a bit tired is all."

Irie leaned back in her chair, but she was still frowning.

"Alright," she said. "It was nice meeting you, Harry."

"Yes, nice meeting you!" Maya said.

"Nice meeting you too."

"See you around, Harry!" called one of the boys whose name Harry had forgotten.

He waved and then walked towards the door.

o

As soon as he was outside, he turned down the street outside and started walking. He wasn't sure where he was going.

He knew he should head home but he didn't want to. It wasn't that late. There was a good chance Ron and Hermione were still awake. He considered going to another pub. Christ, that would be pathetic too, wouldn't it, just drinking by himself somewhere. He should have stayed. He should have thought of some lie to tell them. He should have changed the subject. Why was he so fucking bad at talking to people?

"Potter!" someone yelled.

Harry kept walking.

There was the sound of running footsteps behind him and Harry whipped around just as Malfoy caught up with him.

"Where are you going?" he asked, wheezing and gasping for breath.

Harry looked back towards the bar. It wasn't fifty feet behind them. Malfoy followed his glance and looked sheepish for a moment.

"Smoking," he huffed. "You're leaving?"

Harry shrugged.

"I'm tired."

Harry dug his hands into his pockets. His mind was still hazy from drinking. Words and thoughts were coming slowly. Malfoy jutted out his chin.

"Could have said goodbye," he said, not quite angry, but his voice nearly a drawl, familiar that way. "You know, thanked me for bringing you along and all."

"You seemed busy," Harry said, nodding back towards the pub.

He could see Mark from where they stood, still outside, leaning against a wall, just a silhouette against the light from inside.

"We would have been back in in a minute," Malfoy said.

Harry cringed.

"That's not why I… I just needed to get out."

"So you're going home?"

Harry hesitated. He didn't want to.

"Maybe," he said.

As if he had other options. But Malfoy's expression changed when he said it - if Harry didn't know better, he might have said he looked hopeful.

"Do you want to… I mean, if you'd like we could go have another beer. Somewhere else?"

Harry's hands curled into fists in his pocket and his jaw tightened. For a second he had actually been relieved when Malfoy caught up with him, but - it was one thing to know in the quiet of his mind that he was being pathetic, thinking of going somewhere else to drink by himself, but that didn't give Malfoy any right to mock him for it. They had been perfectly polite to each other all evening, and sure he had been desperate to get out of the house, but it suddenly seemed like the stupidest decision he had ever made, he didn't want his _friends_ to see him like this, so why the hell had he decided that _Malfoy_ of all people-

"Sorry," Malfoy said quickly, interrupting Harry's train of thought before he could even formulate some sarcastic response. "That was a stupid suggestion. I'll just head back then," he said, already turning away from Harry.

"You meant it?" Harry blurted out.

Malfoy hesitated. He looked back at Harry and the silence stretched between them, brittle and awkward. Harry noticed for the first time the way Malfoy had curled in on himself, how tense his shoulders seemed, and the answer was right there on his face. That it hadn't been a joke. Eight years of hatred seemed to hang suspended in the air, and Harry saw Draco's fingers curl seemingly unconsciously around the left sleeve of his coat. Then a car rushed past them on the street, bright headlights flashing over them, and the stillness broke. They both looked away quickly.

There was an old lady with a walker making her way past a group of boys by the bus stop on the other side of the street. Harry followed her progress with his eyes. His heart was beating too fast. One of the boys laughed.

"Sure," he said. And then after a moment’s hesitation added: "We could go somewhere else. If you want."

"Alright," Malfoy said.

Harry nodded and without looking at Malfoy, started walking down the street. He kept his eyes on the ground ahead of him, only saw the movement in the periphery of his vision, as Malfoy fell into step beside him.

"I probably should have told them I left," Malfoy said after a while.

Harry didn't say anything.

"It'll be fine, I guess. Mark saw us leave."

"He seemed nice," Harry offered.

"He was," Malfoy said.

They stopped by a pedestrian crossing. The street was deserted. The silence was more noticeable standing still. Harry watched the light impatiently. It seemed intent on staying red forever. Harry gritted his teeth.

"Where are we going?" Malfoy asked.

Harry darted a glance at him, forgetting for a moment that he was trying to pretend this wasn't happening.

"I don't know," he said.

"Oh," Malfoy said. "I thought…" He began, but trailed off.

The light turned green.

"I'm glad you came," Malfoy said quietly.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Me too. They're nice people."

"They are."

Malfoy's boots had hard heels. Each step he took was underscored by a sharp clack, making his walk sound determined and purposeful, like someone important striding towards his destination. Harry's worn sneakers were nearly soundless on the pavement.

"I can't believe we almost blew your cover," Harry said.

Malfoy snorted.

"I know. _Scottish slang_."

Harry almost laughed.

"Pretty surprised you've managed to convince anyone you're a muggle if you start going on about aurors after one beer."

"I was distracted," Malfoy said indignantly.

"By what?"

"Your stupidity. You're clearly useless without Granger there to save you from yourself."

"_I_ was being stupid? You were the one who mentioned the aurors. _And_ the Ministry, you're lucky that sounds enough like a muggle thing that no one picked up on it. If you'd brought up the Wizengamot, we would have been screwed."

Malfoy hummed, a small, noncommittal sound.

"Not sure we would. It's surprisingly easy, you know. Passing yourself off as muggle."

"Must be if you've managed it," Harry said.

"I mean, in the beginning I was so nervous about cocking it up," Malfoy said, ignoring him. "But it turns out a muggle's natural conclusion to someone saying strange things _isn't_ to assume that there is a vast, hidden magical society existing invisibly in parallel with their own. They assume I'm just weird."

"Odd," Harry said, without thinking.

"What?"

Harry shook his head.

"Nothing. Nothing uh… just. Irie said you're odd. Not in a bad way. Seems like she likes you."

Malfoy rolled his eyes.

"Of course she does. I'm incredibly charming."

"She also said you're too awkward for this world."

"Well. That's unnecessarily harsh," he said, but not like it actually bothered him.

Harry wasn't sure how long they had been walking, wasn't quite sure where they were either. The neighbourhood had changed while they walked, the buildings becoming shabbier, fewer people in the street.

"There's a pub up there," Malfoy said.

Harry had noticed it too. It was a small place with grimy windows and a sort of run down air about it, but not in the cosy way of the place they had been with Malfoy's colleagues.

They stopped when they were close enough to peer through the windows. There was hardly anyone inside.

"Do you know any other places around here?" Harry asked.

"Not really."

Neither of them made a move for the door.

"I've… got some wine back at my place?" Malfoy said.

Harry hesitated. He was cold. They had been walking for a long time. He could probably head home now, if he wanted to.

He was still drunk, but in that unpleasant way where the ease and numbness starts to fade and you can feel the uncomfortable press of a hangover reaching for you. He was definitely not drunk enough to say yes. He was surprised Malfoy was drunk enough to ask.

"Alright," he said, with a shrug.

Harry could feel Malfoy's stare like a physical touch, but he kept his own eyes trained on the pub.

"This way, then," Malfoy said sharply, and was suddenly striding away from Harry, the sharp clack of his shoes heading back the way they had come.

Harry hurried after him.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm sure we passed one just- ah, there it is," Malfoy said, before disappearing into a narrow alley.

Harry hesitated only for a moment before following.

"What-" he began, before Malfoy interrupted:

"Keep a lookout for muggles, will you?" He pulled a pamphlet out of his pocket and turned so he had his back to the street before getting out his wand.

"_Lumos_," he muttered.

In the glow from his wand, Harry watched Draco unfold the pamphlet and the light jumped over a detailed map of London. Draco put the tip of the wand to the paper.

"_Revelio_," he said and across the map, hundreds of little, red dots lit up.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

"Looking for an apparition point. There's one a couple of streets over."

Malfoy put his wand away and folded up the map.

"It should only take five minutes to get there. Is that alright?"

Harry shrugged.

"It's fine."

"Why don't I have one of those," Harry asked, as Malfoy led the way down the street.

"One of what?"

"That map. With the apparation points."

Malfoy made a sharp turn down another street.

"You probably do," he said. "Ask Granger, I'm sure she would never dream of apparating illegally."

"I can't be the only one who didn't know about the apparition points," Harry grumbled.

"You're not. Most wizards don't care. It's only for densely populated muggle areas, so it's not like most people need to know. And you don't normally get in trouble unless the muggles see you, but since I'm… newly immigrated they're keeping an eye on me. Monitoring magical activity around the flat and such. And they put the Trace on me again."

Harry raised an eyebrow at that.

"Really?"

Malfoy nodded.

"Part of my sentence. It'll be lifted again in a year if I don't fuck it up, but until then I have to play by the rules."

"And after?" Harry asked.

Malfoy glared at him.

"After they lift it, I will _still_ be playing by the rules, Potter," he said.

o

The apparition point was in another alley between two overflowing rubbish bins.

"Right, then," Malfoy said.

He pulled out his wand and then glanced at Harry.

"Grab my arm?" he said.

Harry did.

"Don't splinch me."

"Fuck you," Malfoy said, and then the world dropped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that this is the last chapter I had finished, so since I'm caught up to the unfinished parts now, I can't say for sure when the next update will be, but it might be a while.


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